Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Shiffrin.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’m an escape room junkie, plain and simple. I’ve played hundreds (maybe thousands) of rooms, including many by myself! Apparently after four back-to-back escape rooms, some people are ready to do something else. Don’t understand that mentality, but it’s true!
I’ve tried a lot of the scavenger hunt activities out there, but none of them quite hit the mark. I wanted something that felt immersive and put me into the story. I wanted to feel a little like a detective walking around town. And I didn’t want to just find things – I wanted to SOLVE them, just like in an escape room.
I decided to create the exact game I was looking for. But in March 2020, just I was in the midst of launching it, the world shut down. Not exactly the best time to release a game that takes place out on the town (maybe, actually, the worst). I released a virtual version of my escape room and the virtual games took off. My first employee and I still reminisce about taking turns sleeping between trying to service all of the bookings we were getting.
Once people returned to out-of-the-house activities (and after we got a little sleep!), it was time to launch Escape the City. I launched the first seven cities. It was clear right away that we were really onto something. I couldn’t keep up with the emails asking us to release new games and suggesting new cities. Players were even offering to work for us for free!
But a game that takes place in the real world also comes with its own share of challenges. Plaques disappear! Businesses close! Giant art installations that seem permanent are dismantled and removed overnight! Cities hold events and build scaffolding right on top of our clues (how dare they?)!
We received emails from worried players saying they don’t know how we’re existing at this price point, but please, PLEASE continue, because they really need more of our games. (And my friends, that’s all the juice I need.)
But we weren’t in that many cities and we weren’t selling that many games. To this day, to make the costs possible, I assemble the boxes in my garage and ship them out from my house. Enter our first holiday season. We simply could not make boxes fast enough to keep up with the orders pouring in. I called in my tribe. My 5-year-old was on insert duty, my husband called in sick to work, friends came by when they could to stuff lock boxes, my 80-year-old mother applied closure stickers. You get the picture. For weeks we worked overnight. And it was the first time I could truly envision our path to growth.
Now we have 54 cities (and counting). Through all of the ups and downs, bringing this vision to life has been a dream come true. The most common reaction I get is, “It must be so much fun to do something so creative!” The answer is an unequivocal yes. What we create – these outdoor escape games – are a passion for me. And running a business is one big creative puzzle that challenges me every day.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
We have absolutely had challenges. For one, I had no business background. I’m just a person with a passion, a “figure it out” mentality, and an extremely hard work ethic. Everything I know about business I’ve learned since launching. I had to learn marketing, advertising, operational process, sales, web development, cold calling, cold emailing, you name it. We had some growing pains figuring it all out. But that’s also my favorite part of the business. It’s like one big creative puzzle that challenges me every day.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
This business is a passion for me. I’m a creative and I’m always on my toes coming up with new ideas, whether it’s our games themselves or strategies for my business. The fun thing about running a business, as a creative, is that running a business is, in and of itself, the most creative thing a person could do. Yes, my company is selling creativity as our product. But the actual running of a business, from daily operations to future vision, is one giant creative puzzle. I love every minute of it. (Okay, state payroll compliance is a puzzle I could live without. But I love everything else.)
Developing the games is extremely fun. We scour the city to hone in on the right neighborhood – walkable, with great clues and landmarks, and centrally located. Then we scour that neighborhood for tilework, engravings, murals, statues, signs high up on buildings, public art…anything that we could design a puzzle around! We get to work backwards and make the code from the clues.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
The coolest thing about having the game in the Garment District is that it’s not a place locals go to frequently. Tourists will always discover new things playing our games, but one of my goals in designing the games is to show locals things about their city they haven’t noticed before. They might have walked by a building a million times but never stopped to look at a small detail like engraving on the side. One of the things I hear most about the Garment District is that locals haven’t been there before, so the game took them to explore a whole new part of town. And I love that!
Pricing:
- $59.99/box
- We also offer team building experiences with a leaderboard for large groups
Contact Info:
