The company Pockaj d.o.o, owner of the brand Alfastreet Gaming, has been operating for more than 50 years, this is now the second family generation. The first electronic roulette was developed in 1993 for the final customer and the design, as well technical solutions were much different from the products that the company is selling nowadays.

From the beginning, the owner, Mr. Iztok Pockaj, who also designed the first machines concentrated to make the roulettes with the best ergonomics on the market and using the latest available technologies to ensure the long-life operation and low-cost maintenance. Still, nowadays the company has many roulettes that are in operation for more than 18 years and roulette owners are still very satisfied with the turnover of the products. In the beginning, the company was quite small, but soon the demand for the products started to grow up and they were facing yearly also more than 45% growth, due this reason the owner bought a new factory in 1992 and extended it in 2004 to satisfy the market demand. These were very challenging times for everybody since such a huge growth was not expected after launching already the first products.

Iztok Pockaj, commented: “I still remember these times and how hard we used to work at that time. I was working almost 16 hours every day and my family almost didn’t see me. At that time there was not so much information as nowadays, due to this reason most of the parts were developed internally together with our local suppliers. Only in this way we were able to guarantee the quality and the material supply. Today with the experiences and organization that we have, we are able to move even faster and I believe that our machines with all the upcoming solutions will be even more demanded in the next years. I am still working in the design and development and all the time I am following the novelties and competitors and trying to invent something different “

With regard to the novelties for the rest of the year, CEO Tjasa Luin Peric said:“Alfastreet will be exhibiting at G2E Las Vegas together with the US distributor KGM gaming, but the company will also attend the smallest regional shows in Miami, Romania, and Bulgaria.”

“The company is planning to show all the novelties born during the epidemic at ICE London next year, due to this reason the preparations started already a few months ago. During this difficult time, Alfastreet was very active, since we wanted to be prepared for the re-opening period and offer our customers some competitive novelties that will make an impact on the players. We were developing and designing new concept of cabinets, as well there were a lot of investments and works also on the software side. They look forward to showing all the work at the beginning of the next year,” she added.

When asked about the main challenges that Alfastreet had to face during the pandemic, she affirmed: “Never in history, has the company been facing such difficult times, because the industry was completely turned off and the managing of the company was really challenging.   Luckily the management took the right decisions when the epidemic started and managed the company during this difficult period in a healthy and careful way, which allowed the company quite normal business running. The most difficult decision was certainly to reduce some of the staff because some of the workers were working for the company also for more than 15 years and we were aware that it will be difficult to re-start without this experience and knowledge. Alfastreet restarted this year very successfully and we already exceeded our plan for 18%. We believe that this year will be successful. We got back also some workers that used to work before for the company and we hire also some new staff to be able to follow the current and upcoming orders.”

With regard to the impact of the pandemic on the firm’s activity, she answered: “We believe that now is maybe too early to judge the impact of the epidemic on the player’s side because this can change in the next months. Certainly, the online casinos were performing very well, but probably nobody know when and if the players will come back to the casinos and gaming halls. Probably it will take at least a few months more to see the results of the epidemic on the players, but we believe that in the next year some of the players will certainly return back.”

“Alfastreet is selling their products to more than 140 countries all around the world, due to this reason also in these times we are supplying to different European markets as France, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia, as well we did great sales results also in Colombia, US and some Asian markets. Overall the sales are very satisfactory and finally, we see a bright light in front of us. The forecast for the next half of the year is very optimistic and our production is already full by October 2022. We are still facing some problems with the material deliveries, like all other industries, but we are managing the supplies with the production to ensure the deliveries in time. Alfastreet is prepared for the future and believes that 2023 will be even a better year than this one”, she concluded.