When most university students in Hong Kong are busy attending lectures, writing essays, and looking for graduate jobs, HKUST Business School student Raymond Sze follows a different path. He has the desire to run his business, grasping the opportunity to take on challenges in the business world. His business, which gives participants the chills and thrills of playing real-life room escape games, has proven to be a success.
Raymond is CEO and Co-founder of Freeing HK, the city’s first escape room game which was opened since November 2012, giving Hong Kong people unprecedented entertainments. The company has recently set up its sixth center in Kwun Tong to cope with the rising number of visitors.
The horror-themed rooms enable players to take on roles in movies or fiction stories, including The Lost Kingdom, Dark Souls, Silent Blood and others. Its target customers are people aged between 15 and 30. A team of players are locked in a room and must explore their surroundings and find the hints in order to escape and break out of the room within a limited time.
Raymond, a HKUST student major in BBA (Management), said the university program offers him a platform to learn the business knowledge in areas including accounting and marketing. “I need the essential knowledge to put into real-life scenarios,” he says. “The business idea came from playing online escape games on my smartphone. I strongly believe that ideas will have no value if they are not put into practice.”
“In Hong Kong, the choice of leisure activities for young people is quite limited and therefore we wanted to do something different and we became the first company in Hong Kong offering real-life escape room games,” Raymond says.
High threshold
A total of four co-founders, including Raymond, spent only half a year to put the business ideas into action. “We put the focus on finding solutions for all problems in order to fine tune the details,” he explains. “Customer satisfaction is our top priority and we have to react fast and adapt to changes in an ever-changing market like Hong Kong where new ideas come up quickly.”
“In order to sustain a competitive advantage in the business, we constantly raise our threshold to introduce more advanced technology to upgrade our facilities and modify the games to meet changing customer needs,” Raymond says. “We place much emphasis on maintaining our company reputation at a high level by maintaining our quality of service.”
According to Raymond, young people who look to become entrepreneurs must be persistent. “They should never be afraid of facing difficulties and be prepared for the worst to bear all the failures,” he emphasizes.
“Challenges appear every day and an entrepreneur must react fast to find possible solutions,” he adds. “It’s a great experience running the business during my years of study. The university life at HKUST gives me the space and opportunity to explore new things and my business helps me develop invaluable experience and business contacts.”
Sharing his tips for success, he says: “University years could be the best time for students to brainstorm and develop their business ideas. Getting some work experience will stand you in good stead for future life.”
Fulfilling experience
Raymond notes that his job satisfaction comes from seeing his customers enjoy playing the games. “We collect feedback from our customers regularly to ensure they like the games and this is how we find ways to improve our service,” he explains.
He finds it fulfilling to see the business from scratch beginnings to reach final outcomes, in cooperation with other co-founders and staff. Freeing HK also cooperates with some local and multinational companies, offering their staff a wide variety of entertainment services and corporate training.
To build on its strengths, Freeing HK looks to expand its business in Macau and Mainland China in the near future. “Good time management is also important to me so I can strike a balance between work and study,” he says. Despite the heavy workload, Raymond enjoys the process of getting work experience as this will advance his learning at the University.
