EB Games is trying to find out who its first Australian customer was.
EB Games’ Australian arm turns 25 this year, and as part of its corporate celebrations, it’s trying to see if it can find its very first customer (or the closest person to them). To do this, it’s running a competition with a $2,500 shopping spree and an anniversary prize pack attached. Observe:
We’re celebrating our 25th Anniversary this year and we are searching for EB’s Earliest Customer! You could win a $2500 shopping spree and an EB Exclusive 25 Year Merch Pack!
Check out how to enter below!
T&Cs: https://t.co/Rfzo7uui6n pic.twitter.com/a0mY20Ixdz
— EB Games Australia (@EBGamesAus) April 9, 2022
Receipt hoarders and sole traders who record absolutely everything, your time has finally come. To enter the competition, you’ll need to provide EB with a picture of yourself holding your most ancient purchase. A receipt or bank statement showing a purchase from as far back as you can go will also suffice.
Is that you? Can you prove you were EB’s first customer? Do you quite literally have the receipts?
If EB Games were to track down its first customer, they would have been from Sydney and visited the Westfield Miranda store on its opening day in 1997. The Westfield Miranda store was EB Games’ first Australian location. It would expand to Westfield Tuggerah and Charlestown Square not long after.
I still remember the first time I saw an Electronics Boutique. It was at Pacific Fair Shopping Centre on the Gold Coast. It was in the centre’s then main building, which contained a giant Myer and the sprawling food court. I thought it had to be a mistake. The very idea of a store that exclusively sold video games was outlandish. It felt utterly far fetched. This would have to have been 1998, maybe 1999. I bought my OG Xbox from that store. It was the console bundle with Halo and the Sega Rally/Jet Set Radio Future double feature disc.
When the Tweed Mall store opened in 2002, it was right after the worldwide rebrand from Electronics Boutique to EB Games. That store was little more than a hole in the wall, built, fittingly enough, in the remains of an old video game arcade that had gone out of business. I would get my first retail job there in 2007. When the bigger, better, brighter store opened at nearby Tweed City in 2009, it never really stood a chance and was gone by 2012.
I hadn’t thought about those stores in years. What a trip.
Anyway, if you think you might be EB Games’ first-ever customer, get in touch. You might win some stuff.
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