Club Promoter to Business Owner

     When Steve Webb worked as a club promoter, he never thought one day he would start his own company and open Victoria’s only classic arcade room.

     Before starting his company at Metropol Industries INC (an event poster service), he worked as a promoter for various local clubs; however, he found himself frustrated with the range of talent being brought in. He was seeing the same bands over and over again and wanted something different, so offered to assist booking the bands. As a promoter, Webb would be responsible for going out and putting up flyers for clubs on large poster cylinders around town.

     “At that point, the basic operation was to cover the entire cylinder with a single poster.” Says Webb.

     Through working with many club owners, Webb came to know the people who created the posters. Webb realised they were spending a tremendous amount of time and money trying to compete for a certain amount of space on these cylinders.

     “There were far more clubs out there then right now in live music venues. I would say there was about fifteen clubs battling for space on these cylinders.” He explains.

     Webb decided to approach all the night clubs and convince them to give him the poster contracts and he would fight for equal representation for everybody. This meant putting up a poster on every second cylinder with everyone receiving the same coverage. Although the city loved the idea, individual promoters didn’t. Because all of this took place before social media, this was the only way night clubs could get the word out concerning the various events taking place.

     Eventually Metropol started to pick up, eventually printing their own posters, getting their own cutter, making business cards for people, and creating stickers.

     “In response to what people asked for, we continued to offer more services, hired more people, and got different locations. We opened a shop in the west shore which started doing large formats and making signs. It just kept snowballing.” Says Webb.

     Aside from printing posters, Webb has always been fascinated with classic arcade and pinball machines and he’s always been interested in opening his own arcade one day.

     “Metropol slowly allowed me to purchase the machines until I basically had a warehouse full of them.”

     Since Webb’s hobby has been collecting arcade machines, he turned this into his second business by opening Quazar’s Arcade in November of 2018. It is known as Victoria’s only classic arcade and pinball room.

     “If you’re not doing something that you enjoy, it becomes exponentially more difficult. You have to be able to find the joy in what you’re doing. When owning your own business, you’re required to put in more hours than the average person, and you have to invest more time than the average person. Most people don’t have to put their own money into their jobs, and if you run a business you have to come to terms with that.”