IMPROBABLE ESCAPES LOCKS DOWN INTERNATIONAL CLIENTS IN CHICAGO

Last weekend some of the Improbable Escapes team traveled down to Schaumburg, Illinois for Chicago’s Room Escape Conference. As you’ll remember a couple of weeks ago, when we posted the blog post about heading there, this is the aftermath.

When we left to participate in the conference there was definitely a nervous excitement in the air as this was our first time being an exhibitor at an escape room conference. Without really knowing what to expect of the conference, we packed up everything we had prepared for the conference and headed down. Some of us flew while the others drove our precious cargo across the border 13 hours to Schaumburg and the convention center.

Thursday and Friday were dedicated mostly to setting up our 10×20 booth on the trade show floor. Our booth was something we had taken a lot of time in planning out, as it involved building an 8×8 wooden wall that would host our “speakeasy”. We had been identified as leaders in the pop-up escape room game industry, and were asked to host a pop-up game that would be played over the course of the two day trade show, all around the trade show floor.

Let’s back track a little here, what is a pop-up game you might be wondering? A pop-up game is essentially a game you can pack into your car, take to any location and set it up and then take it all down and pack it up at the end of the day. They can run anywhere from a few hours, to one day, to a couple of months depending on your agreement with the location. We’ve hosted a number of pop-up games, in hotels, city hall, historical monuments, and now on a trade show floor!

The trade show took place over Saturday and Sunday, and being that this was our first time we had no idea what to expect. At our booth on Saturday we saw and spoke to more than 300 people about pop-up games, our company, and our props and tech that were available to order from us. We were overwhelmed by the response of Melissa’s seminar about pop-up games and were overjoyed by the praise we were receiving by both fellow escape room owners and enthusiasts alike.

Since returning home, we can now officially say that we have gone international. The success of our exhibit at the conference has spread the word to clients outside of our little city of Kingston, to people we would have never been able to reach without this trade show. We are seen as leaders in the pop-up escape room space, and couldn’t be more thrilled about what the future will hold for us! We have a list of people we spoke to at the conference who have contacted us to create games for them, all over North America!

We would like to give a shout out to our team that came to Schaumburg with us, including our honourary members Erica and Niki. And of course to our team who held down the fort here at home. A special thank you also to Escape Games Canada and Transworld, for the chance to not only deliver our seminar but host a pop-up game throughout the days of the conference.

Stay tuned for more updates on where the business is going and some exciting new game announcements!