As discussed before Empire often goes mainly into short-term contracts with other businesses.
Referred to as Strategic Alliances: ""A cooperative agreement between business firms, it can take the form of licensing or distribution agreements, joint ventures, research and development consortia, and partnerships."
I apologize for the copy and paste, I know it's not my usual style but I wanted to make sure everyone understands exactly what type of "contracting" Empire gets into.
The 2 main types of Business customers Empire mainly deals with are Producers and Re-sellers.
Producers: They buy goods to help their daily operations. An example of this would be the jersey's or sticks Empire owns for it's players. To further explain, the jersey's are brought by a clothes printing company who purchases the jersey's, shirt's, pants etc blank. This would be the same way a construction worker purchases steel in order to create beams or other material needed for them to build.
Re-sellers: Well its pretty simple! They buy goods that are already made to be distributed, so they resell them for profit. Of course I can't make my previous statement without giving an example Empire related!
Companies like Gamestop who purchase games, systems and other gaming equipment wholesale and then resale it at their locations are some of the main types businesses Empire seeks to go into contracts with.
Why is it even necessary for Empire to do business with these 2 types of companies?
Empire has its own online store but it is not enough to facilitate the amount of traffic needed for even a decent amount of sales. Most contract Empire falls into with either type of company generally results in Empire advertising for the company while the company also receives a percentage off of the sales made after and only after the sales have reached a certain agreed amount.
This is the last blog about Empire I will be making, it was a fun ride and alot pain that came along every time I wrote. If I did not reveal it before, I am also a member of Empire Arcadia and used to be a processional gamer myself! I dedicate this and my other blog post to my friend Nelson Reyes (3rd going from right to left), he put his heat and soul into this company not to mention about 50k worth of his own personal money. R.I.P my friend. You often here companies saying we are like family...But in Empire you might as well say we were biologically related.
Although gamer's come in all shapes, sizes and ages it does not change the fact that there is one particular group that latches themselves to games, as if games were a surrogate mother or father to them. This Generation is Y!
If gaming followed a hierarchy format it would look like this!
1. Generation Y: Born between 1979 & 1994. This era is subsequently the most important target market because they were born in heart of the big gaming boom! Gaming, Arcades and all that jazz in this era between these dates. Regardless of when games where actually created this is the era where it made its mark! Games to generation Y is like air to humans, they simply cannot live without it.
Generation X and Z: Gen X born between 1964 & 1979. This era watched and nurtured Generation Y. Although you would assume they would have a heavy interest in gaming as well, they do not. Why? Because it was not integrated into their lives as heavy as it was in Generation Y.
Generation Z, born between 1994 & 2001, why do they have same priority as Generation X? This is because this era grew up around gaming but did not experience the era of being a gamer. What I mean by this is, they never played games in the era where there where arcades and games where used as a social outlet, they never played games and it was considered a rebellious action if you caught playing video games past your bedtime. They will never experience this feeling games give you when your friend owned a game and would invite everyone over to play, and you would appreciate the experience because it was genuinely one of a kind. Generation Z era of gaming is saturated with games to such a high degree its just like walking outside and seeing a car go down the street. How can they be rebellious with their gaming? Cell phones have games now! they can play it anywhere, back then most of us had to travel, wait or only play a game at the arcade! Oh boy! writing about this is starting to make me feel old.... Needless to say at least both of these generations still have some interest in gaming Gen X having a lower interest then Z but to Empire they fall in the same target market when it comes to who they specifically target.
Baby boomers: Born between 1946 and 1964. This era is far to busy running the country to have anytime at all to play video games. They have no connection to video games what so ever! But there are always some exceptions to the rules.
