Today we’d like to introduce you to Scott Kessler.
Scott, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve always been a very creative person and have loved mysteries and puzzles. I graduated from UCSD and through those years some friends and I used to put together these puzzle races that everyone loved. In the many years since then I’ve actually traveled all over the country participating in puzzle race events. About three years ago some friends and I stumbled on an escape room in downtown San Diego and we went there for my 50th birthday. When we walked out of the room at the end of the experience I said “You know I’m 50 years old and if ever there were going to be a business that I was going to start and enjoy, this would be it.” I designed and built all the puzzles over the next 10 months and finally opened The Entrapment.
Has it been a smooth road?
This is a second job for me as I still kept my full time position in the tech industry. So really the biggest struggle was time. I would come home from working all day and then spend the next 5 hours learning embedded programming and electronics, and working on the back-story and characters that would help bring the story I wanted to tell to life. It was pretty exhausting.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The escape room industry was fairly new to San Diego at the time I started designing. The one room we did was very small and had no story or puzzle cohesion. It was literally a bunch of locks in what was essentially a closet. I grew up a huge Disney fan so I knew there was so much potential to make this into something really cool. My goal was to make something totally immersive and to use technology to really bring the experience to life. I think I succeeded in those efforts and I’m known for having some really cool technology built-in to very unique puzzles.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
It’s hard to say if San Diego is better or worse for small businesses simply because I haven’t tried to start one anywhere else. As previously mentioned this industry was, and is, still very new, so most people I spoke with had never heard of it and didn’t know what to make of it all. It could be a little frustrating at times trying to get answers BECAUSE people just didn’t have them for this new type of business. I leaned a lot on friends who have started businesses here when I was having a hard time finding or understanding the varying processes involved and they were a tremendous help. Certainly the internet is your friend as there is a lot of great information on the City of San Diego’s websites.
Contact Info:
- Address: 7990 Dagget St.
San Diego, Ca 92111 - Website: http://www.theentrapment.com
- Email: info@theentrapment.com
- Facebook: http;//www.facebook.com/theentrapment
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-entrapment-san-diego
Image Credit:
Photography by Merrilee
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