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How not to run a LAN Gaming centre - Coombs Style
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You are currently in Gaming Articles and Game Reviews
Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:12 pm
In the cut throat world of business we all know that making your business successful is important, right?
Well this does not seem to be the case for my local lan centre 'Portalmetafisica' aka portal.
This business started out well with lots of interest from local kids needing a place to hang out.
James (the guy who runs the LAN centre) was raking it in and profits went to a massive high.

But then certain regulars noticed the deterioration of the centre, this started out with him not
laying down the rules.  The place became overrun with 'chavs' who brought it on themselves to cause
the owner of the LAN centre (James) a lot of hassle.

He also became lazy and started to simply sit behind his desk play World of Warcraft (WoW) all the time and still does to this day; instead of developing the centre, fixing the two computers that are still broken after one year, tidying and cleaning desks, developing the website http://www.portalmetafisica.com which still remains unbuilt, sitting on an FTP/Welcome to your hosting package page.

He has not updated his blog since Friday, February 17, 2006, and since then, hes actually grown his hair long.

Regulars stopped visiting and the place started literally to fall down, a leak occurred back in 2006 and still
to this day has not been fixed, then two computers, broke, he couldn't be bothered to fix them.

He basically lost the passion for running his LAN centre and the effects are sorely visible.

Myself and Sam visited 'portal' recently to discover the door was locked, it has now come to the situation were
he has to unlock the door to allow people access.  When you walk in you can clearly smell (no joke) the putrid smell of sweat.  The place was in a shambles, we then went to play on the computers and to our disbelieve only a few were running properly and the rest were 'out of order'.  But what was worse was that the computer were filthy,
one computer table even had a left over knife with something yellow smeared on it, well just to say I didn't dare
touch it, the chairs were battered and dirty.

So what's the moral of this story? Well I think people should seriously take into consideration the fact that running a business is a big task and you can't just suddenly get bored with it.  He did have 'aspirations', be them somewhat false, to expand, but he has simply lost interest from the start; where he wouldn't replace a broken fridge bought of ebay; or didn't even bother putting himself in the phone book, or in the local paper.

He is yet another 'entrepreneur' who likes the title, reads lots of "how to become an entrepreneur" books, and gets their rich dad to pay for them to set up a business; until they know that they actually have to put their life in to it.

Figures from Companies House for "Cyber Management Ltd" show a very bleak prospect for Portalmetafisica in financial terms, which is likely to mean the indefinite closure of the centre very soon; and he will probably go back to Sweden where he came from. It is now just going past the point where the business can be saved, what's even sadder, is that he does not admit to his closer customers that the business is failing, when it is clearly evident.

So please don't turn out like
a James, you may not feel motivated all the time but it helps to constantly think how to improve your business
and how to expand it, something which James didn't think nor wanted to do.

Article written and researched by Sam England and William Tildesley[/img]
Rating: 4.50/5.00 [2]
Author: William Tildesley
City: Penrith, Cumbria, UK • iVirtua Ultimate Contributor • Articles: 5

Author Comments
bonfire-db

Joined: 24 Jan 2005
Articles: 2
Comments: 1
Posted: Sat Feb 10, 2007 10:23 am  Post subject:

that's really unfortunate. i've heard many stories of lan centers failing because the people starting them up only wanted a place to lan themselves, and didn't have the commitment to keep them going.
sad really.
Rating: 0.00/5.00 [0]
tomo359

Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Articles: 2
Comments: 2
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 7:46 am  Post subject:

I have noticed that Portal has now closed down. It looks a mess inside. It is his fault though, its not hard to keep a place clean and i'm sure he had the money to fix the computers. I also heard that he had an xbox 360 connected to a HD projector but it was not playing in HD. From what i have heard he really let the place slip. So its all he deserves.
Rating: 0.00/5.00 [0]
Thomas Lohse

Joined: 22 Mar 2006
Articles: 6
Comments: 8
Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 9:47 pm  Post subject:

This is really sad and awful you don't even see internet cafes or anything like that for anymatter around anymore.
Rating: 0.00/5.00 [0]
 

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