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The family fun industry
Mitch, there was no title on the cover of this issue!
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Business New Haven
7/13/1998
By: Alix Boyle
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On the surface, at least, the family fun industry looks as carefree as a walk in the park. Create a setting where parents can bring their kids on a rainy day and amuse them with an indoor playground, laser tag and games of skill and chance. No problem, right?
Now, consider the reality. It was only this year that the Discovery Zone, the pioneer of the indoor-playground industry, emerged from bankruptcy under new ownership. In Connecticut, at least two Curley's franchises recently went belly-up.
Such news, however, has not scared away newcomers to this highly-competitive business. Five months ago Diane Echlin opened Screaming Mimi's Family Fun Center on the Boston
Post Road in Guilford. Buddies Corner is open two weeks ago in Branford in the former Branford Outlet Center (now Lakeview Center) across from Lake Saltonstall.
Buddies owners Stan Cwiertniewicz and Ron Christoforo operated the former Curley's franchise in West Haven, which the pair closed. They decided to go it alone and forego franchising fees and expenses. At Buddies the pair charge just $3 for admission - $2 to $3 less than other family fun centers.
“We're hoping they'll come and spend money on tokens and the snack bar,” says Cwiertniewicz. “If you charge too much [at the door], people will only come once.”
Bob Green, owner of Curley's in Branford, is an old-timer in the kids' business. With his wife, Lois, an early-childhood educator, the business has been open and thriving for more than four years at a prime location on Main Street.
“It's a good business to be in,” says Green, a former insurance company executive. “Unfortunately, everyone thinks we're making a million dollars. Two competitors opened up. Our circle of customers isn't that big and there's only so many ways you can cut the pie.”
Green did careful market research before opening his Curley's. He figured his customer base to be the approximately 200,000 people who live between the Quinnipiac River and Baldwin bridges. His target audience is families with kids aged one to 12.
What Green didn't bank on was a nosedive in business during the summer months. Parents, it seems, want their children to play outdoors when the weather's warm. Green responded by visiting area park and recreation departments and suggesting that summer campers visit Curley's as a field trip.
To attract employees, Green sought suggestions from local school principals and parks-and-rec directors. He employs teenage staffers to run the show under the supervision of adult managers.
Green swung a licensing deal in which he pays no franchise fee and only $1 a year to use the Curley's name and concept.
Curley is a monkey who visits kids' birthday parties. The concept is a safe indoor playscape with ball bins, tubes, slides and climbing apparatus.
There is a restaurant serving homemade pizza, hot dogs, snacks, drinks and sandwiches. In the mini-arcade, children buy tokens, play games and win tickets they can redeem for prizes. On a recent afternoon, two boys turned in their tickets for plastic vampire teeth and toy soldiers. Green also plans to add a laser-tag room geared to younger children.
A mainstay for all family-fun businesses is birthday parties. For around $10 per child, centers will put on a children's party including invitations, food, cake, goody bags and of course, entertainment. All parents need to do is pay.
Other smaller profit centers are the games, restaurant, and the gate fee of $5 or $6. A family with two children can easily spend $20 or more in a couple of hours at one of these places. Green estimates his customers visit twice monthly.
Green rents the property, site of the former Horwitz Department Store, from the Horwitz family. Green says he's asked the landlords to make needed repairs to the building, but to date without satisfaction. So Green is instead trying to buy it. The site sustained minor damage in the fire that devastated downtown Branford several months ago. In gratitude to the firefighters, Green allows them to bring their families once a month to Curley's for free.
“If our demographics were better, it would be an excellent business opportunity,” Green explains. “We show a profit every year, but you're not going to get rich in this business. There's a high cost of operation.”
While Green is a renter, Screaming Mimi's Echlin bought her building and turned a former pizza parlor into a castle. She sank $1 million into renovations and interior design to produce a brightly colored (if slightly cramped) two-story fun center.
Visitors feel as though they're walking onto a Candy Land board. The building has whimsical details like tree trunks for columns, turrets and fanciful sculptures of Mimi and her animals inside and out.
Instead of a monkey, Mimi is the character who will visit your party. She's a spunky blonde, pig-tailed girl of eight or so who is “a little bit rough-and-tumble, a little bit cultured, independent and herself. She's not too Pippi Longstocking, and not too Barbie,” says Echlin, the granddaughter of the founder of Echlin Inc., the Branford-based auto parts manufacturer.
Echlin, 30, a divorced single mom, was looking for a business opportunity more than a year ago. After toying with the idea of a bed-and-breakfast, she visited an indoor playground with her daughter Anita, now three, and hit upon a plan for a similar - but more elaborate - business.
“I felt like I could do it better,” Echlin explains. “I want to be the benchmark of the industry. I want to go nationwide in ten years.”
So Echlin attended amusement-industry trade shows to educate herself in the business. There she saw everything from the video games that rake in the bucks at amusement centers to the computer software that is essential for running such a business.
She chose a prime spot in Guilford with a McDonald's across the street and easy access to I-95.
Screaming Mimi's was the first area facility to offer laser tag, says Echlin. For those grown-ups who are out of the loop, laser tag is a sort of high-tech Capture the Flag, in which players wear a vest with sensors. If a player hits you with a laser gun, he or she scores a point. It costs $5 above the entrance fee.
Beyond laser tag, “The biggest thing that sets us apart is our food,” says Echlin. “Our menu was developed with adults in mind. We have pizza and hamburgers, but also things like grilled chicken Caesar salad and veggie burgers.”
A computer-generated security system had so many bugs Echlin abandoned it for a low-tech hand-stamp system to make sure children don't leave with the wrong adult.
Echlin, who will have a grand opening party on June 19, is already scouting for a second location.
While the shoreline seems saturated with family amusement centers, New Haven has just one: the Discovery Zone. Too-rapid expansion sent the franchiser into Chapter 11 in 1996. It was taken over by Wellspring Associates LLC, a company specializing in turning around troubled companies, says spokeswoman Marybeth Clayton.
With $100 million in private financing, it is revamping and renovating the business. No longer a franchiser, the company owns all 203 centers throughout North America. Its CEO, Scott Bernstein, has experience as a Six Flags Theme Parks Inc. executive.
With everyone from mom-and-pop operations to McDonald's getting into the indoor playground business, DZ strives to stay ahead by offering name-brand fast-food like Pizza Hut pizza and glitzy entertainment that's tied to movies like the popular Men In Black laser tag game. Clayton says that DZ is profitable, just one year out of bankruptcy.
As long as there are rainy days, kids and birthdays, there will be family-fun centers. Time will tell which ones survive.
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