Courtesy of Dealflicks From left: Kevin Hong and Sean Wycliffe, co-founders, aong with Renny Bestari, a former intern, and Evan Pham, business development manager.
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Sean Wycliffe knew “The King’s Speech” had gotten rave reviews. So when he arrived at the theater about two years ago, he was surprised by what he saw. “It was a great movie, but the place was just empty,” he said. “It had 230 or 240 seats, but there was me and a couple and that was it.”
Mr. Wycliffe had just completed his bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Midway through, he’d taken time off to start a small marketing firm with his brother. Now he hankered to build something new.
He found himself thinking about Hotwire and Priceline, the discount sites he’d used for several years to book hotel rooms that would otherwise go unoccupied. “What if we could partner with theaters and help them fill their seats in the same way?” he wondered. Moviegoers would pay for discounted tickets, specifying the film, the approximate time of day and the neighborhood. After completing a purchase, they would learn the exact showtime and theater.
Mr. Wycliffe incorporated Dealflicks last year. He started working full-time on the project in January along with two co-founders and they introduced a beta site in July.
Co-Founders: Mr. Wycliffe, 29, is the chief executive officer. Kevin Hong, 27, is the vice president of sales, and Zachary Cancio, 25, the chief technology officer.
Employees: Dealflicks has one full-time employee, a business development manager who started out as the company’s summer intern. Two more – a designer and a software engineer – are expected to come onboard soon.
Location: Dealflicks moved in October from Mr. Wycliffe’s Oakland apartment to Mountain View, Calif.
Pitch: “Dealflicks is like Priceline.com or Hotwire.com, but for movie theaters,” Mr. Wycliffe said. “Right now about 88 percent of seats are empty on average. We partner with movie theaters and help them do marketing to fill these empty seats. Our deals are usually tickets – or tickets and popcorn, tickets and soda, that kind of thing – at up to 60 percent off.” From that discounted price, Dealflicks typically takes a 10-percent cut, though agreements vary by individual partners.
Traction: Dealflicks has contracted with 62 movie theaters so far. First to sign on was the Gardena Cinema in Los Angeles County. Mr. Hong wooed its Korean owners by bringing them his mother’s homemade pajun scallion pancakes.
While trying to build a primary base of theaters in the Bay Area, Dealflicks has also inked deals with partners in Arizona, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.
This fall, Dealflicks won a slot in the accelerator run by 500 Startups, a seed fund and program for early-stage ventures created by Dave McClure, a former PayPal executive. The relationship developed after Mr. Wycliffe and his co-founders attended Unsexy, a conference for companies that are promising but unlikely to set pulses racing in Silicon Valley. At the conference, they talked to every 500 Startups alumni they could find.
“Then when walking out of an auditorium, we literally stumbled upon some dude coding on the floor. That dude turned out to be the C.T.O. of LivingSocial, Aaron Batalion,” Mr. Cancio wrote on his blog. “But neither Sean nor I realized who he was at the time. Like a scout, I surreptitiously looked at his name badge. I muttered a quiet suggestion to Sean and before I knew it, Sean marched up to Aaron and introduced himself.” That chance meeting wasn’t all it took to get into the accelerator — but it helped.
Revenue: So far, Dealflicks has sold a couple of hundred tickets, according to Mr. Wycliffe, who said total revenue has not yet passed the single-digit thousands. “But the growth is there,” he said. “This month, we’ve sold more than in the previous three months combined.” The company issued its first paychecks on Nov. 15.
Financing: Dealflicks has raised $115,000. Friends and family put in about $65,000. The remaining $50,000 came from 500 Startups. The company is seeking $250,000 in angel investments.
Marketing: The company holds parties at college campuses to get the word out. (“Dealflicks just hooked us up with a keg!!!” one Berkley student announced on the company’s Facebook page.) It also focused on search engine optimization, working to rank high in Google searches when users hunt for ticket deals. They’ve partnered with several larger sites that take a commission for driving sales their way. And they’ve also scored appearances on a couple of Bay Area television news affiliates.
Competition: Movietickets.com and Fandango are the Goliaths of the online ticketing space. “They’re great but they’re different than what we do because they only sell full-price tickets, and they charge a convenience fee as well,” Mr. Wycliffe said. Entrants in the discount space are more of a wild card; five or six of them have come and gone in the last couple of years, he said. One contender, MoviePass, offers unlimited theater trips for a monthly fee. (In a sector that loves analogies, it aims to be the “Netflix of movie theaters.”)
Being “unsexy,” Mr. Wycliffe believes, “is kind of good in a way, because in Silicon Valley, everyone’s focused on that next, next thing. They’re looking at video on-demand and social networks. Most are not focused on the movie theater industry.”
Challenge: Can Dealflicks convince a critical mass of cinemaphiles to trade their ability to pick an exact time and theater for a cheaper ticket? Building the customer base is essential to attracting more theaters that, in turn, could attract more customers.
“Eventually, we’ll need to partner with some of the top chains to grow the business,” Mr. Wycliffe said. “For now, it’s about getting to the point where we have more and more theaters, and we’re filling up all of these empty seats.”
You can follow Jessica Bruder on Twitter.
Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/an-unsexy-company-tries-to-fill-movie-seats/?partner=rss&emc=rss
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