Protective measures to counter an unseen killer are hitting the events industry hard - but a murder mystery specialist who feared for her own survival has managed to reposition herself as a digital party provider.
Jo Smedley’s award-winning Red Herring Games faced a slow and painful death with the prospect of months of lockdown as the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
It thrives on gatherings of six or more - and while the initial government grant has helped cover overheads at the Grimsby shop and online emporium, a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan request decline left them spinning.
Jo, who is a small business and export champion with Humber Local Enterprise Partnership and Department of International Trade, said: “The first two weeks of lockdown we realised our small murder mystery firm would be ‘dead’ itself if we didn’t do something rapidly.
“The government grant came at just the right time to cover our end of month wages in March, but when the bank turned down our CBIL request - apparently that’s not an uncommon thing among small businesses applying - I was really worried about our survival chances.”
From rubbing shoulders with ministers and the likes of Dragon Theo Paphitis and Ann Summers founder Jacqueline Gold CBE, as well as devising games for the Agatha Christie estate, it has been a remarkable decade in business - but the fear was that was all it would be from humble back room beginnings in Grimsby.
However, rather than curl up in a ball and lament the situation the innovative firm pivoted and rapidly entered the market for digital parties.
“The entire team has worked their socks off for three weeks, supporting customers with daily puzzles and weekly quizzes while we repositioned ourselves in the market as a virtual murder mystery provider.” Jo said.
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“We’ve been in constant contact with our website firm Brink Media who have supported us throughout this time, taking payments on credit card rather than direct debit when money was tight, and generally going the extra mile to help us adapt what we sell. And I’m pleased to say that all that work has now paid off.”
Coronavirus support:
Sales of virtual murder mystery games have sky rocketed in recent weeks which means she has finally been able to sleep easily at night knowing she can continue to pay her staff, with the eight strong team on the front foot again.
With the firm stabilised, she’s now working to support the actors she occasionally employs by launching a series of virtual murder mystery events, and training them up to become online hosts for families who want help throwing parties globally.
“Self-employed actors have been really hit hard by the Covid-19 restrictions,” Jo said - with even coffee shop and restaurants - a familiar back-up role - closed. “For many of them, they have no other employment and survive on limited resources as it is. Work for actors is extremely sporadic normally, and most of them have little part time jobs so they can indulge in their passion - which is acting. Covid-19 has seen many of them made redundant from their part time work, and with no acting jobs coming in either - they have really been hit hard.”
Switching live events online wasn’t that difficult thanks to the technical support. “The biggest challenge with our events is the interactivity within them.” Jo said. “But we’ve been exploring how to make them run on a limited budget and think we’ve established how to do it using standard ‘webinar’ technology. It’s a whole new learning curve for us, but I think it is for everyone. Fortunately all our customers are behind us and willing this to work, so fingers crossed this is the start of something regular!”
A first event takes place on Saturday night.