"Although we observe a slight upturn in Europe, we are seeing only 20% of the growth forecasted in early 2020"

In an exclusive interview with Yogonet, Roberto Perea said that the manufacturer’s priority is to maintain its customer portfolio in this global crisis. "We know recovery will be slow and we will need to be flexible," he said. "We hope operators' investments will resume in the second half of 2021."

"The company currently has two different business units: one is dedicated to casinos, which as we all already know, were completely hit by the COVID-19 crisis; in June our sales volume was zero," Perea commented but added that the other unit, focused on retail with cards and board games for home-use, began growing in the last few months and that has allowed as to at least catch a breath but has not offset the loss in our casino segment," he explained.

"We began noticing a slight upturn in the casino segment, especially in our sales in Europe," the Fournier executive highlighted. "Although we believe we are close to 20% of our budget last year."

As regards the company’s contact with operators, Perea said "the industry is facing a situation of struggle and survival." Operators’ orders were considerably reduced, their projections are not beyond the short-term yet."

"We believe we will eventually see a casino industry similar to how it was a few months ago. But now, Fournier is relying heavily on retail as well as online sales, with distributors such as Amazon and other e-commerce companies, aiming to boost this segment and, frankly, this strategy has worked quite well. We were able to take advantage of the demand created by all those people who were staying at home and wanted to buy cards, board games, etc."

Watch the full interview in Spanish on our Youtube channel.