Successful Elements Often Overlooked

[Bull]

Hi all.

Let me cut to the chase. I am in the process of opening my first club with two partners. These individuals approached me a number of months ago with their vision, of which I was skeptical of to start with. Their vision of a club was great, and they certainly had the right background in the industry, but they lacked the business experience to make it work. This is probably why they came to me, because I had the money and the business experience to complete the team. The more I looked at the idea and the market, the more I thought that it would work.

As we have progressed, I have always looked at our project as any business proposition. That is probably one reason why we’ve come as far as we have. Since then, we’ve closed deals and surmounted some pretty big obstacles along the way. At present, we are in the design phase of a totally new club. As tempting as it is to let your imagination run wild with the minutia of the design itself, I don’t want to neglect the other aspects.

So I come asking for opinions and ideas about our project. I am looking for the opinions of the experienced club operators. What is the major element to success that you can pass along? I am not looking so much for abstract ideas, like ‘know you market’ or ‘hire good staff.’ As valuable as that advice is, I am more interested in advice that is tailored to the industry itself, rather than the abstract that they teach you in first year business school. That sort of thing is applicable to any business venture. Instead, tell me about what you would do different if you could rewind to where I am. Would you make your dance floor bigger? Would you make your food menu smaller? Would you put you milling area in a different location? Did you totally regret targeting the market segment that you did? Would you have invested more money in a patio rather than the interior aesthetics? Please bear in mind that I have a limited background in running a club (although I do frequent them). But that is my weakness. I have an equal say in the business as my partners do, but without their background. I do trust them in that aspect, but I do know how important it is to have all your bases covered. I know what elements would tend to make a club popular and what would kill it. But I need more than that to be an equal partner.

Thanks.

[The Event Guy]

One thing I would do is be very careful with your design elements budget. It's easy to caught up with very specific details and that can make your budget soar throught the roof.

I would use lots of lighting elements to detail your club. Yuo know, highlight the "targets" of the club i.e. bar tops, stairwells, artwork, etc.

Lighting gets over looked time and time again because operators tend not to think it's as important as a sound system ot the bar. But, in all honesty, if you have your lighting elements in place, designed and operated by a professional then you can really be cost effective with designing the venue. This will leave (possibly) you with more monies for other areas such as marketing.

there's much more to it than just turnings lights on/off.

That's one area, hope it helps...

[BigMo_Atlanta]

Permits, licenses and the "mood" of your club are important. Another thing you should have before applying for your liquor license is a well thought out and detailed security plan. The biggest issue when facing a lawsuit or liquor license revocation hearing is security. Most clubs just hire bouncers to enforece basic rules. More ofther than not, they are poorly or not even trained at all, and this is a huge liability. I would make sure you develop a security plan.

The most common reason for clubs being shut down is related to their security practices. If the club has a bad rep for handleing situations in too physical of a manner, or on the other side of the spectrum, if the police have to be called every time there is an incident, you're going to have problems. This means that management has failed. They didn't properly train their employees.

Everybody can dump all the money in the world into their club. They can play the best selection of music. They can have the best location. The can have the best drink prices and quality. All this is great, but the fact still remains, if you don't protect you investment, ie. training and established policies, you will fail. Nothing else matters

[David]

Bull:

I can help you walk through this. My question is, what have your partners proposed? How is your budget set up?

If anyone had to do it all over again, I think that everyone would ask this one question. "Does everything stay the same?"

What do you want to do? If you don't mind, post what you can here. Things like what you have chosen as a music format, decor' and so on.

Like Event Guy says, "be very careful with your design elements budget. It's easy to get caught up with very specific details and that can make your budget soar through the roof." I agree 100%. You do need a couple of WOW items though.

Do the things that you can in the beginning and save some of the other elements to do later. This way, you are always evolving as a club and a business. New in this business is a plus. Like us, we try to upgrade or do something new every quarter or immediately after our competition does. Even if it's painting one of the walls a different color. We like to steal their thunder just after they make a big deal out of their newest item. Sure it pisses them off but, that's business.

Here are my answers to your sample questions.

Q: Would you make your dance floor bigger?
A: Yes, but only for the weekends. It's just the right size for the weekday patrons. I would build a dance floor that could be increased or decreased in size so that people would always be rubbing up against each other no matter what day of the week it was. I would use items or displays to make the dance floor smaller during the slow times and remove those items to make the floor larger to accommodate the crowds on the weekend.


Q: Would you make your food menu smaller?
A: It depends. We have a restaurant next door with a full dinner menu. We only have ten or so items available to the bar patrons through the restaurant. And, it's only offered between 4p and 10p. We don't want food items or the smell in the club once it gets busy. We also rotate the items monthly. We keep the top sellers, which is usually about half of what's on the menu, and replace the non-selling items with new items. Varity baby!


Q: Would you put your milling area in a different location?
A: It's funny how these "milling area's" work. We have a small chill room in the back of the club. It hardly ever gets used to it's potential. Most of the people seem to hang out as close to the front entry as possible. This applies to every club that I've ever visited. They want to see who's coming in and stalk them from there.


Q: Did you totally regret targeting the market segment that you did?
A: No. You will find that the Target Market changes about every three or four years. You too will change to meet the demand. One thing that I learned in Vegas at the show this year really sticks in my mind. By the year 2005, the 21 to 25 year old demo will increase by 500,000 each year for the next ten years. This is great for the bar business. That's why we are looking at increasing our target areas.


A: Would you have invested more money in a patio rather than the interior aesthetics?
Q: We don't have a patio. My opinion is this. It depends on what you are doing as a club. Are you open early and are trying to attract a Patio type crowd or are you a Nightclub that doesn't get busy until after 10 or 11p? I don't think that you can be both.

We have numerous bars that do a great patio business but once the clock strikes 10, their patrons leave to hit the dance clubs.

Just a Note:

I'm considering on building a large building and use the Party Bar format. I'll design the building so that it can be sized up or down depending on the crowd. I'll accomplish this by using movable walls, curtains and furniture. The total square footage will be around 6000 square feet. It will be able to be sized down to about 1500 to 2000 square feet when it needs to be. The smaller, 1500 to 2000 sf area, will look and feel more like a Lounge. As the weekend arrives, we will open walls and raise curtains to accommodate the crowd and transform into a Nightclub. We will also have a patio and a court yard.

Just a thought to where I'm headed. All opinions on my idea will be greatly accepted.

Bull, you can PM me if you want.

[Cheek]

what would I have done differently? Hmmmm.... More naked chicks. Yup, for sure, more naked chicks.

[Joe]

Hey Bull, great question(s).
David covered a ton, but I will certainly reiterate one thing that he mentioned.

One of our venues was built from its opening with a large sliding dividing wall. I can't begin to tell you the difference it's made in our ability to draw and hold a crowd. As the crowd becomes larger, the door, actually a combination of two doors, one smaller that's opened first then the much larger of the two, revealing the back bar and dance floor areas.

Secondly, the restrooms, I would build them out of concrete and steel if I could, many a dollar has gone back into the bathrooms over the years. If I could just take a hose and spray it down at the end of the night into many floor drains, it'd solve many issues. Also, Bathroom Valets really cut down on damage to property, but many an argument can be had over their aesthetic.

Culture of your market is one of great importance. By this I mean do people expect certain things out of bars or nightclubs in your area? For example, when I moved to wisconsin to open a couple of places I was shocked at the bar games that people played while they were at either a club or a pub. Dice games, card games, coin games, it was really strange. When we didn't feature the tools to play these game many people were immediately turned off.

The Buzz factor, after 14 years in this business, I'm just now starting to get a real grip on what it means to create a buzz (on purpose) which usually leads to word of mouth. Here's what I would consider to be key factors in creating a buzz.
Brand Identification and association: discover what it is your customer reads, wears, listens to downloads, and align yourself with it. For example, Maxim Magazine, Abercrombie, MTV2, Dave Chappell, whatever it may be get creative and involve those brands in your promotions. For example, I noticed the second round of Maxim's hometown hotties was coming up, so I developed an 8 week program in which the club joined the search for Maxims hometown hottie. The radio stations and print media ate it up....oh also, we gave Trojan condoms away to every woman through the door for the duration of the program. Of course, there were other elements that made the promotion succeed to the tune of nearly 60K over 8 weeks on a WEDNESDAY! when we weren't even open previously, but the point is that it created a HUGE BUZZ for the club and we began to notice that our other business days also began to climb.
Books to read with your partners:
Marketing Outrageously (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1885167504/graphtronics)
Ice to Eskimos (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887308511/graphtronics)

Database marketing
Begin from day one collecting the information on every person through your doors. It's supposedly 60% easier and less expensive to sell to someone whose already shown an interest in your product. The easiest way to collect this information is at your front door with the swipe or capture of every ID that's presented. Yes, you'll have to create an entirely new position in your company for the database manager, but the returns are unbelievable and will help to keep your ad budget in check once you've established yourself a bit.

Scheduled shift by incentive:
The staff members who get the most people through the door weekly, whether through coupon or passes or some other way to identify that the customer was invited by them. You'll find the staff far more eager to make new concepts and promotions work if they have a direct control over their own incomes. I've always been bothered by bar staff that look to the management as if they haven't done their job when things get slow. They need to understand that it's as much on their shoulders. (in theory)

BE SURE TO BEGIN YOUR BUSINESS WITH AN INVENTORY CONTROL COMPANY LIKE BEVINCO (http://bevinco.com) I literally saved 200K to the bottom line in one year with their monitoring assistance.

Lastly, don't ever be hamstrung by an employee of any rank. They all must be dispensable, including yourself.

Sorry for the rant,
Joe

[David]

Great post Joe, like always.

Did you have your club name on the condom packaging?

Whenever we give something away, we place one of our self-adhesive logos on it. This let's them know where they got it and helps us advertise. The labels cost us less then a penny. We even do this with all of the products that the distributors give to us to give away.

[David]

Here's a link for the imprinting on a condom package.

I think that this would be a great promo item for Zen and Shepherds Nite Club.


http://www.ripnroll.com/customcondoms.htm

[zookeeper]

I have some opinions on your idea if you're interested.

P.S. Been awhile. Curious if you remember.

E-mail me. Let's chat.

zoo