Entertainment retail businesses risk overbuilding due to early novelty-driven demand spikes
Nolan Bushnell · Atari & Chuck E. Cheese's: Nolan Bushnell · Feb 27, 2017 · at 39:45
Nolan Bushnell reflects on the business mistakes and lessons learned while scaling Chuck E. Cheese across the United States.
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“Entertainment is very fragile. It's driven on novelty. And so when we would first open A unit. People would come from all around because it was novel. So there was sort of a half-life of a shine in which you say, gee, you know, this is St. Louis. Looks to me like I need four more Chuck E. Cheese's. When in fact, what you were seeing is this novelty bonus, and that people in normal life didn't Really want to come to Chuck E. Cheese three times a month. They wanted to come to Chuck E. Cheese every other month.”
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