Meet Adam Coe of Evil Controllers in Tempe

Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam Coe.

Adam, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I started the business in my dorm room of 2007. I am an avid gamer and wanted to improve my gameplay, so I redesigned the conventional controller for consoles. After doing so I was performing at a higher level, so I knew I just needed to get my controllers into gamers hands!

After my freshman year, I decided to leave college (University of Arizona) and pursue my dreams of growing a business in the video game industry. I quickly had successful sales, surpassing $1million in my first 16 months of business. Sales first began with eBay, however quickly transitioned into our website www.evilcontrollers.com.

Along the way, I began customizing controllers for not just the casual or hardcore gamers, but gamers in need. Such as gamers with disabilities like Muscular Dystrophy, Cerebral Palsy, wounded veterans, Amputees, any limitation we can design controllers for this gamer. This opened up a new area of passion for myself, with over 11 years in business and over 1K accessible controllers made.

Over the years we’ve experienced transitions with our products as the business started with the legacy consoles Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. In 2015, the industry had to adapt to an entirely new console and controller from Xbox and PlayStation for the latest generation consoles Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This was a significant learning experience as we had to bring in the new product while supporting old product and recreate our industry with a new design.

This prompted a new opportunity for innovation and further customization of controllers. With a new platform, we have new possibilities for gaming, sparking more demand than ever for competitive controllers.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Initially, the business grew too quick for the team to handle, allowing competition to make headway into space. This has been challenging, but ultimately our push for retail extended our resources and proved to be extremely challenging for the business. We were in every Best Buy nationwide with controllers in over 1K stores.

This was a new experience for us as the volumes we experienced were high velocity and stressed our logistic system. However, we learned from this and began to create a proprietary software that allows us to customize controllers in a cost-effective manner. With this new logistic system, we were able to set a solid foundation to build upon for higher volume while maintaining minimal costs.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Evil Controllers story. Tell us more about the business.
Evil Controllers provides custom video game controllers for casual gamers, hardcore gamers, down to accessible gamers. We are known for our game enhancement modifications, however, we are respected as one of the leaders in the space. With our innovation in product design, recognizing a need for gamers, and fulfilling that need allowed us to pave the path for custom game controllers.

What separates us from others is our innovative products that are patent pending, with some approved patents as well. We focus on controllers, but we provide them for all types of gamers. The casual gamers that need a gameplay edge (our proprietary code provides this). These types of gamers want every modification they can get to improve their gameplay, even if the modification is not tournament legal.

Another type of gamer is the pro gamer or hardcore gamer, competing in tournaments with 100% approved for tournament play controllers. Lastly, another avenue of focus is the accessible gamers or gamers with disabilities.

These three avenues all contribute to gaming, however, our competition only focuses on 1 of the 3. It can prove to be difficult to allow for customization from a cosmetic level to a circuit board level, which has kept competition minimal. Fortunately, this industry is difficult as you must have the proper team in place to reverse engineer the controllers, write code, design the controllers, and also produce them. Being that our team consists of all self-taught programmers, designers, etc. we’ve learned our industry from the outside in.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Luck has played a significant part. I was fortunate to have come up with the idea when I was only 19 and a freshman in college. I had less responsibilities, less risk, less worry, and confidence in my product. Luckily the industry was ready for it and quickly contributed to the success of the business.

Timing is so much of success, the stars must align your luck to maximize your efforts.

Pricing:

• $180-$200 average sale

Contact Info:

• Address: 2050 E. 5th street suite 2 Tempe, AZ 85281
• Website: www.evilcontrollers.com
• Phone: 4804218047
• Email: adam@evilcontrollers.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evilcontrollers/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/evilcontrollers
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/@evilcontrollers
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/evilcontrollers/

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