Go behind the escape room…
Hey everyone. My name is Will Rutherford. My wife and I own Escape Artist Greenville on Stone Ave. We are an escape room business, which is the industry name for a highly themed adventure in which participants have a limited amount of time to perform a series of quests. Sometimes the quest is merely to “escape the room” but more often it is along the lines of solving a mystery or finding a secret treasure. When we meet new friends and tell them about our business the most common question is “So how did you get into the escape room business?”
Well just like many other businesses, there are a variety of different ways to get into it. One way is to purchase a franchise. This would include all room designs, set pieces, and puzzles, as well as marketing materials etc. Another option would be to purchase an escape room package from a third party. In this case the adventure is already designed and built for you but you manage everything afterwards. We chose a different option: design and build everything ourselves right here in Greenville! This is arguably the most daunting because it’s all on us to come up with unique and fun designs. We had to begin small. We started with one escape room in a small shared office building. Over the next 2 years we grew to 6 unique escape room experiences housed in our own 5,000 sq ft. building!
Developing concepts from scratch is not the fastest or easiest way to build an attractions business. But it gives us some unique advantages. One advantage is that we can guarantee that you have never seen anything like any of our experiences anywhere else. They can only be played in Greenville, SC! In our industry, each new escape room design needs to be fun, different, and intriguing every time or our customers will lose interest so we challenge ourselves to create adventures unlike any other. The second advantage is that because we have developed everything ourselves we have the skills and knowledge to continually improve the experience through the years. We are obsessed with creating escape adventures and want to learn everything there is to know! We want to push the envelope with each new design through the use of storytelling, immersion, lighting, sound and, of course, fun and challenging puzzles. We have the freedom to tweak games along the way to make sure that it is the best experience we can offer.
Designing and building escape rooms, along with running the business, has been a challenging experience but everyday reinforces how much we love what we do. We could not imagine doing it any other way, or in any other place than Greenville!
To book your first (or next!) escape room adventure with Escape Artists Greenville click here. You can also follow them along on Facebook and Instagram to stay up-to-date with all their new escape room updates. Happy escaping!
Want to meet Will & Kim Rutherford? Read their exclusive Q&A interview here.