OPERATOR OF THE '80s
Mickey Smith of Fresno, California
In July of 1981, Mickey Smith and his part-
ner, Dr. Robert Leibowitz opened their first
Cosmic Empire Video Pinball arcade in
Fresno, California. Within eight months,
they had established three locations in
what was virtually an untapped market-
place. Guided by a well-developed and ag-
gressive marketing plan, they pumped lots
of pizzazz into the three locations. Theirs is
a story of success that blossomed in the
boom, rode out the recession, and contin-
ues to thrive today.
The expertise of their distributor, C.A.
Robinson & Co., proved very helpful in i niti-
ating the business, and that expertise and
service continue today. They also sought
an outside source to create a professional
design concept. Each location occupies
2100-2600 square feet and sports 50- 80
games. The rooms are floor-to-ceiling mir-
ror of a dark grey tint which projects a
space-oriented, futuristic and expansive
atmosphere. Overhead monitors, steel
grey carpet and a black plastic reflective
ceiling complete the total concept.
Mickey and Bob are just as committed to
a unifying concept on how they market
their games to the public. Strict behavioral
rules ... no snack bars .. . nothing but the
best quality games and the cleanest envi-
ronment are to be found at Cosmic Empire.
Every game is charted manually to keep
Mickey's internal grading system updated.
Approximately one-third of the equipment
is rotated every four to six weeks.
As a secondary source of income, used
equipment is sold to other arcade and
route operators. Mickey has also expand-
ed the business into actually operating
numerous machines in other arcades out-
side of his own locations. "We have acer-
tain amount of say at these outside loca-
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IT'S YOUR
BUSINISS
Flexibility in Operator
Options Pays Off
Joe Franta of the# 1 Fun/Just for Fun Fam-
ily Amusement Centers writes in from his
Chicago office to tell of a problem en-
countered at their eleven locations and an
astute marketing solution rendered (re-
printed with permission):
I thought I would drop you a line to inform
you about something we have done to our
ATARI STAR WARS coin video games to
increase the earnings on them.
A few months ago we started noticing
that our sitdown STAR WARS games were
dropping in the rankings at most of our
..
Mickey Smith and his Atari hot ones!
tions in how they should market the
pieces," he reports. "Our share of the split
ranges between 50- 65% to reflect the pro-
fessional service and top-caliber games
we provide."
Through tight management of the bot-
tom line, the forces behind Cosmic Empire
have always been able to keep open a
budget for new equipment. ''The key to
successful operating today is experiment-
ing with your mix. The days of banking
games are obviously long gone." Mickey
not only shuffles around the types of
games, including video, laser disc, pinball
and novelty, but also recognizes the ad-
vantage of featuring different cabinet
styles, from uprights to sitdowns and cock-
tail models.
Interestingly enough, Mickey reports that
Sprint 2® still does exceptionally well and
that an old Atari 4-Player Football® game
he purchased at an auction a year ago
rooms. They had always finished between
4th-6th place, and after the holidays we
started seeing rankings of 6th- 9th out of
the games. This worried me. Part of the
problem was that the game was getting
older and part of the problem was the in-
creased competition of other games that
were up against it.
My first thought was to reduce the price
on the game from 2 tokens per play down
to a single token as we had recently done
on another of our space-themed games. I
-
Managers
Spe,io\
1 GAME - 2. TOKENS
GAMES - 4 TOKENS
3
Must Se
A\\ 'Tokens ' t Gome
d setore s
rte
\nse
J
even outperforms laser disc games on
some weeks. "TX-1 will have people stand-
ing in line just because of the novelty ap-
peal. Its being a driving game on top of
that will serve to sustain the interest."
Other independent Fresno arcade and
route operators have looked to Cosmic
Empire as the "big boys on the block." This
deference is a misconception argues
Mickey, because he faces steep competi-
tion from the big chains that have come in-
to the area, including Malibu Fun Center,
Nickels & Dimes, and Pizza Time Theatre.
However, he does admit that his game
rooms have been popularly dubbed the
simple generic, "The Video" by players
throughout the whole county. "See you at
'The Video' Friday night." And Mickey can
count on a full house trafficking through his
high-volume location.
"My arcades are all located in strip shop-
ping centers-as opposed to enclosed
malls." The high-volume store is neigh-
bored by McDonald's and Bob's Big Boy.
Together the merchants hire two off-duty
police officers for weekend evening duty.
"This provides a sense of security for the
steady players and the employees," ex-
plains Mickey.
Cosmic Empire enjoys a "hot" reputation
because players appreciate the profes-
sional courtesy shown them . And players
talk ... so the word gets out on the street
fast. The first year and a half, ads were run
each week in the entertainment section of
the Fresno Bee. Promotions were spon-
sored with several of the local youth-orient-
ed radio stations. Once the niche was
carved out and an image built promoting a
"socializing atmosphere," Mickey took to
placing coupons in the gold pages of the
phone book. ''Today the market may be
such that we do need to think about adver-
tising again ... promoting charity tie-ins
and fund raising that may not really affect
the bottom line but will be good for Cos-
mic's image and the industry's."
then remembered back to the time I was
looking up something in the STAR WARS
owners' manual and saw that you could
program STAR WARS so that it would ac-
cept the following combination: 1 game
= 2 tokens; 3 games = 4 tokens. In this
way we would be keeping our 50¢ initial
play, but we could discount a multi-game
purchase.
We have since initiated this policy on all
of our games and in 8 out of 9 games, the
rankings have either stayed the same (on
2 games) or gone up (on 6 games).
And even in the cases where the rank-
ings have stayed the same, this is good
news because we have added 5 or 6 top
games to the room during this period.
To inform the customer about this
change, we insert the enclosed (pictured)
promo card in one of our high score card
holders on top of the game.
This is another example of how the in-
creased flexibility of ATARI games (pro-
gramming changes) pays off!