Caine Monroy is a nine year-old entrepreneur that decided to set up his own arcade in his dad’s auto parts store. The arcade is in a makeshift state of cardboard currently but has been a relative success. Caine’s success is mostly due to a video featuring him and his idea that went viral on Vimeo and YouTube.
Being the talk of the town, Caine’s arcade business is visited constantly by both television crews and enthusiastic children who are eager to take a peak at his development. Caine has attracted a lot of business with his extremely low pricing of $1 and $2 for tickets. The cheaper of the two tickets allows for a customer to have 4 plays while the second ticket allows for up to 500 plays enabling the customer to decide just how much time they are willing to spend at the arcade (price matters little). On the side, Caine also makes money by selling shirts that say “Caine’s Arcade” for $15 a piece. As of now, it is not clear how much money Caine has earned total, but he has made up to $212,000 in donations alone.
Caine’s business is relatively small right now, but is growing rapidly in popularity. He is also getting the name of his business out by selling shirts that advertise his business when worn by his satisfied customers. It goes to show, you are never too young to become an entrepreneur. You just need a cool idea and a market segment to sell it to.
First of all, I love arcades so if I lived near him I would definitely stop by this arcade. Second, it is so cool that he started this in his own garage. I think often times we think that in order for our idea to flourish it has to be on the biggest stage, but in some cases this is the smallest stage, just his garage. However, he had an idea and believed it could be successful and that is all that matters!
I really like what Caine has done with starting with just a simple business idea of the arcade shop, and developing it to be part of a YouTube video, shirts and donating to charity. With the way his business is growing in popularity, there is no doubt it will become a true success.