"When we opened our ephemeral premises, we were struggling to find our clientele, we had different options and contacted Sortir à Paris. Pascal did a great job of helping us and giving us visibility. We weren't visible at all in the beginning: nobody knew we were there!"
"We tried some of your colleagues, it wasn't good, no return on investment and on the offers we tried. Only Sortir à Paris worked. We asked all the customers how they knew us and clearly we knew that Sortir à Paris brought us a lot."
Creating and developing The Edge, a human adventure of entrepreneurs with a passion for video games.
Arnaud, president and co-founder of The Edge, created the concept with his partner Valentin at the end of 2018. "We develop and market ultra-immersive experiences that combine VR with quality sensations. So concretely we send you into space: when you have a big ship coming at you, the ground will shake, when it brushes against you you'll have wind, and the reactors, heat."
"We opened in several stages. First in our first ephemeral location: last year, in 2022, a 60m2 space, where we were for 6 months: rue Sedaine, and rue du Château d'eau. Near République and Bastille as at present (The Edge is currently located rue de Nazareth in the 3rd arrondissement, editor's note). We were looking for an area like République, which is lively, where there are lots of businesses, lots of different metros, accessible, ten minutes' walk from Les Halles..."
"Following the success of our 60m2 business, we opened a 360m2 space 5 months ago, and it's going really well. Our ambition now is to open nationwide, then internationally. We also want to develop concepts in the leisure sector: our ambition is to create immersive experiences for cultural venues such as museums. We haven't had any partnerships yet, but it's something we're looking at closely."
Arnaud and Valentin, a story of 20 years of friendship, and of building a concept from A to Z
"My partner Valentin and I have known each other for over 20 years now. We met in high school, we bring each other in, we both pull each other in the different fields we master and vice versa. Above all, it's a story of friends coming together around a project. We both come from entrepreneurial families: on Valentin's side, his family were shopkeepers, while my father was an entrepreneur, and my grandparents were restaurateurs and cheese-makers. We really come from the French entrepreneurial culture, we've been immersed in it since we were kids."
"We've always wanted to set up a project together, and we saw an opportunity with Virtual Reality, saying to ourselves, the current offerings aren't bad, but we thinkwe can make our own contribution in this field. We took the plunge, without any training as developers, and learned a variety of trades, surrounding ourselves with people who had the skills we didn't have in-house.
"Team-wise, it's just the two of us, and we're recruiting two people for the first time: for the Game Master side, so getting people to play in the room."
A new proposition on the Virtual Reality experience market
"We want to make people dream! The Edge is an experience at the crossroads of film, video game, theater and adding sensations for the ultra-immersive side, which there wasn't on the market and so we wanted to offer it."
"As gamers ourselves and video game enthusiasts, we have a vision that allows us to offer an experience to all audiences, which is why the concept really appeals overall: we're 100% customers who want to come back because they loved the previous experience, which is great because it shows we've created something good."
"In video games, it's like in movies: we all want to have a great experience, but few people can. Our success is really down to our passion and all the testing we were able to do with customers and improving the concept throughout the project, or we traveled to companies with demo versions to get feedback."
Player-side experience paramount to building The Edge's successful experiences
"The virtual reality players are doing a great job. There are a lot of players, game studios that exist and offer to rent licenses to venues, what we call arcades. On the other hand, experiences like The Edge, created ex-nihilo, designed for the arcade, and marketed by the creator himself, don't exist very often, and we're very proud of that."
"We've managed to make up for that through passion, and by concentrating on what we thought was most important for players, our customers: it's the soul we've put into the project that makes it so popular. "
"No waiting, helmet cleaning: that's the most important thing for us, we have a capacity to get 14 people through simultaneously, but for example we're very rigorous about not being late even at weekends, in our customer experiences."
Meeting Sortir à Paris
When we opened our ephemeral premises, we were struggling to find our clientele. We had various options, and we contacted Sortir à Paris: for the record, my wife, who is also a company director, offered us the first sponsored subscription to Sortir à Paris. Pascal did a lot of work with us to help us and give us visibility. We weren't visible at all at the start: nobody even knew we were there! We tried some of your colleagues, but it wasn't any good, no return on investment and no return on the offers we tried. Only Sortir à Paris worked. We asked all our customers how they knew us, and clearly we knew that Sortir à Paris brought us a lot. As soon as we're highly visible on Sortir à Paris, we have an impact on footfall and our business.
An experience for friends or corporate team-building: the best way to welcome a diverse clientele
"We must be at 40/60, 40% of our customers are companies and 60% are individuals with friends or families... This was what we had anticipated, but we know that in terms of visibility we have very good prospects for growth and development. We have 2,000 monthly visits to the site, compared with 80,000 for some of our competitors: and we've already reached our break-even point with these 2,000 visits. As we're new, we need to get our natural referencing back up in the pages..."
"Even though we're in tech, we send people into space, but we want people to have an experience that's obviously immersive but also warm, that you feel good about from the beginning to the end of the experience. We don't want to spin our customers: we want to communicate our passion. These are the values we ask for when recruiting our Game Masters: energy, a warm welcome and a smile for our customers."
A mini amusement park in the city center
"We sometimes get tourists, but our customers are more likely to be Parisians, or people passing through from the regions who are on holiday and looking for activities in Paris."
"We didn't want to set up in the inner suburbs, because there's a lot of indirect competition in terms of entertainment and leisure offers. We were taking the risk of drowning in the crowd, so we had to be in Paris! That's why it took us so long to find the right premises, the right partners, and the money to develop the game and not for a landlord. Now we've found the space we've got, and our regional development will really be downtown: we want to offer a mini amusement park, but downtown, with the pre-show first and then the VR experience in the box. Our ambition is also to dress the whole room up like a spaceship. We're never satisfied, there's still plenty to do!"
"République, c'est la clé": crucial partners, local restaurateurs
"The location for us is the most important point, to limit our risks as much as possible, we had to have the best possible location, it was one of the most important subjects so along with the game: it's the location that makes you ready for this kind of leisure experience."
"République is perfect for businesses, there's a great offer of very good bars and restaurants super. We can accommodate up to 56 people in our experiences, but from 28 people upwards we've set up rotations with the restaurants next door. We partner with local restaurateurs and caterers, for example , a vegan caterer that opened next door. We get local companies to work with us, and introduce them to the major groups we host. We met all our partners just by going to see them, right next door on the street: we went to eat at their place and then we send them our business groups: it's a great way of bringing the evening to life."
The follow-up to The Edge: profitability, a second game, and regional development of the concept
"We'd like to go to big cities like Lyon, Nantes and Bordeaux, but we also like Rennes, which is close to Paris by public transport. And if we have the opportunity to expand internationally, we'd rather do it in European capitals at the moment. But those are other legal issues, for example."
"It will also be the development of the concept as a franchise, or the exploitation of the concept: we're starting to have a lot of ideas for doing this, rather from next year: our priorities at the moment are the profitability of the location in Paris, the development of our second game and then we'll see."
"The most important thing for us is to see smiles on our customers' faces; we can work for 13 hours without a break as long as people are having a good time."
Discover the original Sortir à Paris articleThe Edge: the virtual reality revolution in the heart of Paris' 3rd arrondissement
Virtual reality fans, THE EDGE opens a monumental space in the heart of Paris! Dive into an immersive VR experience inspired by "Ready Player One", where realistic sensations and space adventures await you. [Read more]
The Edge: the virtual reality revolution in the heart of Paris' 3rd arrondissement
