Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming June 2016 14 didn’t have a single meeting on my calendar to present that product to customers and I was watching the sales team get fired up about this product. We had just launched the Helix cabinet which is our flagship upright, high definition monitors and these guys were just fired up about presenting it. I though to myself, “I should be out there selling this stuff.” I was looking for an opportunity on the commercial side and had formed a relationship with a guy called Vincent Kelly who was then a consultant overhauling our outbound sales process and is now our Managing Director. He needed some help here in Macau and I saw it as a great opportunity to jump to the commercial side. IAG: How did your wife feel about such a big move at the time? Industry profile will say that the transition was very smooth. I have to give a lot of credit to Aristocrat and our HR staff for really easing that transition. I turned up on Day 1 and I had keys to my car, my name on an office and an apartment. Those things make it a lot easier and more comfortable. We had our little family unit, a safe place to live and from there we started to venture out and explore. We really took it as an adventure and that starting point made all the difference. To walk into a comfortable situation and then explore a new environment and learn some new ways plus a bit of the language has been fun. IAG: What would you say has been the biggest challenge in coming to Macau? CR: It’s going to be hard to find a negative. I’ve enjoyed every minute of this journey. This market is fascinating and I feel very fortunate to be working in a growth market. You’d be well aware that a number of markets around the world are flat – maybe through regulation or imposed machine caps or saturation – but Asia has a long way to go and we’re really just at the beginning of this journey. It is a different market and there was a lot to learn. We had to get to know the product which is specific and slightly nuanced, but not so much in the titles. We do produce a number of titles specific to the market and those happen to translate well This market is fascinating and I feel very fortunate to be working in a growth market … a number of markets around the world are flat – maybe through regulation or imposed machine caps or saturation – but Asia has a long way to go and we’re really just at the beginning of this journey. CR: We were actually entertaining a role in Sydney at the time which prepped us for the expat journey. We were about to have a daughter – my wife was three months pregnant and had to get her head around moving internationally so Sydney seemed an easy transition. We had great friends there. That kind of softened us up – then China came along. We thought we were going to Sydney, then I came home one day and said, “How do you feel about Macau?” IAG: Macau must have come as somewhat of a culture shock for both of you? CR: It was different. We were prepared. We knew we would be faced with language barriers and different food so there were definitely some elements of that. It was clearly different to our life back home. But I