Benoit “Tev” Theveny is a French entrepreneur living in Japan known for his large amount of videos on YouTube, and his multiple businesses.
When he films, he talks about his travels, his meals, his family life, entrepreneurship, corporate life, life in Japan and the particularities of this country.
He accumulates several YouTube channels: Tev -Ici Japon , Ici Japon Corp , Tev & Louis .
When he started his own business, he created online stores selling candy, clothing, calligraphy colored paper, Japanese retro video games, One Piece and Pokémon cards, and Kanji learning apps.
And then one day “Tev” came across the ad of Ludovic’s video game collection on Ebay:
He then got in touch with him, and saw the potential in this collection for a possible museum.
Tev is also a fan of video games, and the preservation of video game heritage is close to his heart.
He then started talking to everyone, documented everything via multiple videos and set up a crowdfunding campaign for the Odyssey Project on KissKissBankBank.
I use the third person singular, but Tev doesn’t work alone, he has many employees who oscillate between multiple companies, videos and social networks.
With this project, Tev has attracted the attention of “Florent Gorges”, the historian and entrepreneur of Omake Books, who joined him on the project, Marc “Marcus” Lacombe, veteran presenter of the TV channels GameOne and Nolife, and KenBogard , host, videographer and commentator among the well-known French personalities of the video game industry.
The President of the French Republic also welcomed this project.
The Odyssey project is not an ordinary museum, it is first and foremost an entrepreneurial project, which will be treated as a place of entertainment for profit. Tev justifies this choice by his observation of the economic models of other museums. They often rely on public funding that varies depending on the government’s affinity with the subject of the issue.
As Tev is an entrepreneur, he wants to make sure that visitors to the Odyssey come several times, consume on site, enjoy the attractions, and check out the incredible video game collection.
He and his team have found that other museums are usually visited once, so there is little to no point in going back.
The Ici Japon team therefore intends to have a sustainable business model, thanks to their extensive entrepreneurial experience.
The name of the project was chosen in reference to the first commercial video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey (Wikipedia entry in French, in English).
Thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign at 4541% (?!), the Odyssey project has raised 2 million euros and convinced more than 32419 contributors.
This is only a first step before the museum exists. Everything remains to be created, and it will be quite a challenge for the Ici Japon team since they don’t live in France.
With a strong start, we can’t wait to see what happens.
The AFP (Agence France Presse) has made a video of it visible here and a complete subject here.
Image credits: featured image of the KissKissBankBank crowdfunding campaign.
