Some people would consider being locked in a room for an hour the furthest thing from entertainment imaginable.
But for Perth entrepreneur Bernie Janes, it’s a multi-million-dollar business model.
Mr Janes and his brother, Daniel, are the brains behind Escape This, an escape room business they started from Perth five years ago.
For the uninitiated, escape rooms are timed challenges where players have to solve puzzles to find keys and escape, usually within an hour or less.
The rooms are themed around grand set-ups, tasking their inhabitants with everything from rescuing world leaders or escaping pirates, to solving a murder mystery or finding a long-lost Egyptian tomb.
It’s a model that’s quietly gaining traction in an entertainment industry dominated by stalwarts such as cinemas, mini golf courses and bowling alleys.
Market research firm Verified expects the global market for escape rooms to reach a $38.3 billion valuation by 2032, bolstered by a 14.8 per cent compound annual growth rate.
The industry is growing faster than the global movie market (4.9 per cent), recreation centres (6.2 per cent) and the entertainment sector (2 per cent), according to market valuations.
For Bernie Janes, the appeal of escape rooms is the fact it gets people off their phones and into an interactive space; an idea that’s quickly grown beyond Escape This’s first venue, in Northbridge.
“Most operators have three, possibly four rooms, but we build big centres,” Mr Janes told Business News.
“Our flagship CBD venue, when it’s finished, will have fifteen different worlds in it.”
Beginnings
Mr Janes got his start in the UK’s paintball industry before fairer weather brought him to Australia to start the business.
Escape This opened its first centre in Northbridge in January 2020, five weeks before the pandemic put the brakes on business.
“Our timing could have been a little better,” Mr Janes said of the business’s launch.
“But we used that period to really double down on our tech and work out exactly what we wanted to bring to the market.”
That proprietary tech is what Mr Janes believes sets his business apart in 2025.
Each of the company’s escape rooms is developed from a 1,300-squaremetre factory in Bayswater, where a team of creatives develop pneumatics, animatronics and even custom scents to bring the rooms to life.
“Walking through our factory in Bayswater is like going through Aladdin’s cave,” Mr Janes said.
“It’s a wonderland, and it’s definitely the most fun I’ve had running a business.”
It seems the fun factor is driving foot traffic, too.
Escape This has grown from $55,000 in annual revenue to $6 million in the past six years; growth Mr Janes attributed to repeat customers.
“If I pull out any ten bookings from our system, between four and five of them will have been booked by somebody who’s already played our rooms,” Mr Janes said.
“Once people are inside our ecosystem they then want to come back and do more.”
Revenue growth is only part of the story, however. Mr Janes wants to keep his costs down by leaning on economies of scale and expanding the business to the east coast.
Currently, one of the company’s escape room costs around $100,000 to build and takes 10 days to bring online.
Revenue averages $259,000 per room, per year, giving the company a 70 per cent gross margin to play with in an effort to bring costs down.
“We can generally get CAPEXneutral in about six months [of launching a room],” Mr Janes said.
Crowdfunding
In future, the business plans to build the rooms and associated fittings at the Bayswater factory, and ship to venues on the east coast, ensuring a room that’s been popular on one side of the country can quickly be replicated on the other.
Escape This opened its first Sydney escape room in 2022 but is considering Melbourne and Brisbane as the next entertainment frontier.
“We want to get to 100 rooms in the next three years,” Mr Janes said.
“Where we go beyond that is anyone’s guess.”
That vision was the driving force behind the company’s recent crowdfunding campaign, which attracted $1 million in proceeds within 72 hours of launch.
By the time the campaign wrapped in late September, Escape This had raised $1.4 million from nearly 360 backers, many of whom had played the escape rooms and were eager to see the business grow.
The average funding commitment was just over $4,000 (reportedly more than double that brought in by a comparable crowdfunding campaign managed by OnMarket).
“We are excited to welcome more co-owners on the journey to scale Escape This nationally,” Mr Janes said of the raising result.
Immediate plans include the establishment of a Melbourne venue and an expansion of its Sydney footprint.
Mr Janes said keeping quality top of mind would be key.
“We don’t need a hundred different rooms: we need a strong portfolio we can replicate well,” he said.
“The risk is that you lose quality as you scale. We always want to be confident that you’ll get the same level of experience whether you visit our venues in Perth or another city.”
Post-raising, with hundreds of new shareholders and an illiquid private register to think about, management accepts there will be new questions about Escape This’s liquidity, especially as it continues to chase scale.
“Nothing’s off the table,” Mr Janes said when asked about future investor exits, adding that the priority would be delivering on the company’s 100-room commitment in the coming years.
“We think there could be value in a future ASX listing, but there are other exit pathways to consider.”
For now, Mr Janes said his goal was simple: build escape rooms faster, pay back their cost sooner and keep quality at a level that brought customers back.
“We wanted to take the premise of escape and combine it with theatre and cinema to give people an adventure,” Mr Janes said.
“Total immersion is what we are striving for.”
