We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Akos Gabossy a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Akos thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

I normally spend weeks on finding the best names for my companies. With PANIQ ROOM, it was a little different, since a small company in Hungary was using this name already. I immediately knew that was the name and a key to our success, so we purchased it from them. It had the potential to become a well-known brand name that is easy to memorize and describes what we do.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am the CEO and co-founder of the PANIQ ESCAPE ROOM Franchise.

During my high school years, I spent an academic year in Burbank, CA as a foreign exchange student from Hungary. The family who I lived with took me to Chuck E Cheese’s outlet, where I decided that I wanted to do a business like it back in Hungary. 8 years later, after I finished my University in Budapest, I finally convinced some investors to open up a huge playhouse in a Mall, that was the time when I became the co-founder and CEO of KACKAC Playhouse in Budapest and I was one of the owners of the Millipop Playhouse and became the key-advisor of several real estate projects, before the age of 30, I was also deeply involved in several multi-million dollar real estate developments, food and beverage projects and a big openair adventure park. I had the knowledge and the experience by the time to do something more exciting, like exporting a new amusement concept to the US from Eastern Europe. I got inspiration from multiple sources. Since our job was to entertain people, I have to follow the consumption trends and cultural changes. I consider myself a creative person, it’s always elevating to see my ideas come to life and bring joy to our customers.
This was the time when escape rooms became very popular in Budapest. Me and my partners decided, that it was finally a good time to do something outside the country, and it was a challenging endeavor! We decided to bring the concept to the US in 2014, we opened our first 2 units in California using our own savings. We became an official franchise in 2017 and it basically took us almost 5 years to find out the right business strategy. We wanted to build an international company that could be sold one day. PanIQ Room is one of the pioneers in bringing escape rooms to the US. In 2014, PanIQ opened its first escape room franchise in the United States in Hollywood, and today has franchises in Las Vegas, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Atlantic City, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, with new locations planned for Seattle, Sacramento, Long Beach and Los Angeles. We are a rapidly growing franchise brand with the most innovative amusement concept in the industry.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

With hard work and self-effort. In the beginning we didn’t have any fundings or investors, so we put together what we had with my co-founder and started to build our first unit in America and I am proud of our story. I built up a growing American franchise from Eastern Europe from nothing in less than 5 years. I didn’t get any financial help from anyone, I could only rely on my knowledge and hard work. The biggest problem nowadays, is that nobody likes to tell the honest story of their first million. Those parts of the success stories are always missing, while I think that’s the hardest part.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

During the pandemic I had to sit down and think about the future of my company and my own career. I always knew, that we are in a very vulnerable space, the physical aspect of our business limits drastically the potential outcome. I always wanted to do something in the technology sector, this is why we actually started to work on a very innovative marketing tool/application, that will be launched soon.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://paniqescaperoom.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paniqroom/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabossy/