Ideas for a nightclub ? What features did you like best ?
 

For thoses that didn't know I've spent the last couple of years in the nightlife business. I started with a social networking and now I also have a nightclub.

We're looking to open a second one soon, probably in montreal and we're looking for ideas.

Here are some videos and pics of my club. We have features every night (musicians, big names djs etc).

Vidéos :
http://www.summumsherbrooke.fr.cx/
http://www.partytonight.tv/videos-12...b-sherbrooke-2

http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._5091373_n.jpg
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._5925597_n.jpg
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._3396870_n.jpg
http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._5183538_n.jpg
http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._6179428_n.jpg
http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._6595794_n.jpg
http://photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos...3_297499_n.jpg
http://photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._4769274_n.jpg
http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._1022636_n.jpg
http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos...3_977687_n.jpg

People.... lots of hot people. Nothing else matters if it's empty.

looks good. where is that?

Sherbrooke, Qc :) About 1h drive from montreal if you drive fast. Big time student town.

Beeing a web guy that's the easiest part... I rape the competition it's not even funny lol.
But we have to offer a good product too to back it up.

clubing clubing

I really enjoyed this show. The stage and night club was good. "Kool Haus" at Toronto, Canada.

http://katuwapitiya.com/wp-content/u...y-046-copy.jpg

The stage lighting is one of the most important things to make it look good.

Look for companies such as http://www.christielites.com/ (Christie Lites) to provide excellent lighting for the concerts, as well as make floors and other materials for the stage.

Very nice stage Fatfoo

Sleazydream could probably give you a long list of what NOT to do.

Looks like you already know what you're doing.

A soundproof or almost soundproof balcony with glass walls and floor, so you can look at the people at the dancefloor and on the stage while enjoying a drink and some conversation. Put up some couches and make them semi-private, i.e. half to 3/4 of a circle with the opening part facing the special bar that you put up there. To be able to go all night, an experienced party animal knows that you need some place to wind down and relax some. You could either charge extra for this VIP comfort, or make the drinks there more expensive. People accept that and actually enjoys it.

long time no see. glad to see you're doing great.

i'll give you an educated, experienced opinion. of all the clubs i've ever dj'd in and promoted and managed, i think the thing that is MOST overlooked and not taken seriously, and causes tremendous discomfort to patrons is the bathroom situation. Many clubs are jammed into buildings that shouldn't be clubs, or were one type of club in on era, yet another type for the new business.

A tricked out plush girls bathroom designed for girls will fill your club ten times over with puss. You know as well as I do, girls do consider that stuff when they go out.

If you have the luxury of building a club from the ground up focus on the things from the patron's view. Traffic flow and plenty of bathroom stations. If a building code calls for 4 urinals put 12 in there. Like I said if you're building your club from the ground up and not moving into a venue that's built.

Make plenty of space for people to get into the bathroom and back out. There's nothing worse than having a great time and having to go wait in a bathroom line for 25 minutes with a bunch of other dudes. The best clubs I've ever been in were built from the ground up to be super clubs.

Bathrooms. Oh, and a coat check. Must have a coat check for the girls.

And, if you really wanna get big pimpin, put a separate bathroom somewhere for the talent to use. Nothing is worse for the staff than having to wait in bathroom lines.

:)

Hope it helps.

Inside Outside, Outside Inside Club :2 cents:

http://unrealitymag.com/wp-content/u...01/roxbury.jpg

start a pub. nightclub crowds are finicky.

hookers and strippers are always nice

Good advice from seeric.

fyi, dre, my nick changed it was A1R3K

fyi. in case you were wondering who it was.

We just sold our Nightclub we had here in Hollywood. I had no idea you were in the club business too.

Clubs are like boats, the two best days are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. :1orglaugh

Great business though if you have the time and energy.

We are well equiped for the talent, we have private bathrooms too.

We have 4 bathrooms (5 with the private one) in the club and 3 coatchecks (we often have to store over 1000 coats).

I'l post some pics in 2 mins.

Very good idea, with a martini bar with hundreads of choices of drinks. That'd be my kind of spot.

Here it's a student town so we can't get too fancy with the vips and private spots, we do have one for groups of 30 to 50 people upstairs.

www.summumnightclub.ca/summum.html lots more pics there.

Pubs don't make enough money to stay in business.
Bottle tables is where the money is at.

Very well said, you can spend 10 million dollars in a club, but without people in it, they will go down the street where the guys spent 100K because it has more people in it.

Nobody ever appreciates the interior design of a nightclub.

Here it's a student town so we make money on the masses. We have over 1000 people 3 nights a week. Crowded. We sell about 30 bottles a night but it's nothing to keep us in business.

Totally true. From my experience working in clubs for a short while, once you turn the lights on at the end of the night and see what most places really look like while empty and lit up it's just a fucking pisshole. Nobody cares if you dropped a million bucks on some art-deco entranceway or whatever.

When you show up half cut at 10:00pm looking for meat, in dim light, with the music pounding, the show lights doing their thing, people crowded everywhere, you don't tend to pay fuck all for attention to the ratty floor, black painted concrete walls, bare rafters, or whatever else. I've seen it happen time and time again. club runs for a couple years,they shut down for renos. slap a new layer of paint on, move the bars around a little bit, and put some new lights up, change the name, and bam brand new super sweet club that everybody is talking about.

What do you mean, 30 bottles of beer a night for 1000 people? Sorry, you lost me.

Yup, very true. But in our case we put in a lot of money in it and didn't take the easy way out. We made our money back from the first few years and we do it out of pride and ownership since we had a lot of celebrities hanging out but If I were to blindfold myself and had a spray gun and painted the whole place black nobody would have noticed a different. Like you said, you show up to drink, dance hook up and have fun. Its not a 5 Star hotel that we are trying to impress guests.

Let me correct that, we would make our money back the first year, not first few years. :)

I think he means 30 bottles a night through bottle service.

I'd say that 30 bottles a night in a college town isn't bad at all. Probably pays for a few things I'm sure.

He means he sells 30 bottle service bottles a night with 1000 people in the club

Low Dollars clients and he makes up for it on volume

guess you don't know pubs in a canadian university town.

True enough, take a stroll down Whyte Ave. Probably still my favorite place ever to go partying.... :thumbsup

I like clubs that can totally change from night to night, like Pacha in Ibiza, even seems like the toilets are in a different location from one night to the next, walls slide out of nowhere, floor can raise and lower, club can shrink and expand depending on crowd size.

CLUB XS @ Encore in vegas. thats place is like a money machine

but...

FUNKTION ONE sound system and you are straight

Make sure your drunk tank has adequate and nice seating ... also make sure it has some speakers. Your unlucky patrons will thank you.

Oh and make sure you have a good side door to get those that OD out of without causing too big a scene.

:1orglaugh

Don't stick the smokers in some grungy little corner in the alley. Fuckers already gotta go stand outside, give 'em some cover and adequate comfortable space to step out the side for puff. I used to hate having to stand around out the front door on the sidewalk to have a smoke.

Feature I Liked the Best
 

live music, national bands, 2 floors is perfect, live music on one, dance club on another, and good bartenders. Other than that a good promoter. You'll have a winner. I've seen it several times now, brings in two completely different crowds(read you sell more booze because your diversified).

That's some of the best feedback I've read.

Exactly. People don't buy bottles... we sell by the drink. We have a dozen azbars towers running non stop.

Props to you Doc Dre! All dat looks good man. I aspire to be like you... Can I come feature DJ one night or two?

I don't know of too many pubs or sports bars around colleges that even sell bottle service.
If he is selling an average of 30 bottles, that's great.

Break them up. Nothing kills a night faster then having to go opposite ends of the world to go the bathroom. But otherwise of the club you have it rocking. Why not copy it?

Wow sorry to hear that as I always use you as the guy who owns a top club in LA that I barely sort of know hahaha. We hung out one night with your brother. Great club so i am sure you made a bundle on it.

:1orglaugh

As long as you had fun, that's all that matters. My partner and I built it as a hobby and next thing we knew, it was the hottest club in LA (For a couple of years until the next new thing opened up) lol But we had a great run. My brother helped out a lot too.

some wise words here I can expand on I learned the hard way.

I agree on the bathrooms completely. Lots of pissers in the mens - TONS - you need like maybe 1 shitter though per 300 total people int he club for the mens. If men can't pee they can't drink more and less revenue so the men above anything have to have TONS of urinals. They have to able in a packed club to walk in and pee without waiting.
When I took my club over from my ex-partner the woman's washroom was shit. I totally rebuilt it tiling the whole thing and having a huge makeup area with lots of mirrors. It doubled the amount of women comming into the club. WOmen need a makeup area and it needs to be cool, clean and neat with an area to spread their crap out on. LOTS of mirrors. Tile isn't that pricey and it's almost indestructible. Frilly things get broken fast. Going like a roman tile theme worked really well and once completed I got amazing reviews on the bathroom. Also toilets are HUGE concern. I got ones that had an air bladder in them that forced anything upto donut size down them. Nothing got clogged. The worst thing you can have is clogged toilets and if you're in an old venue redoing plumbing is way more expensive than just changing the toilets for air bladder ones. (they look the almost the same but when you flush then it sounds like a jet wooshing off)

Coat checks need to be able to handle 1 staff per hundred people in the club at closing -(much less the rest of the night but getting coats back FAST is key) ie - 500 person club - 5 people in coat check getting jackets. If people have a hard time leaving it's the last thing they remember and dont' come back.

A separate bathroom is great for talent - I had that with a separate room for them. A single unisex bathroom is fine for this. Gets you much better acts and upgrades the feel for the local acts that arnt' used to high end treatment.

As for the Good looking people comments... I believe honestly it's probably the worst thing you can market to. The hottest crowds are the hot tiny girls and the super hot guys. They don't drink. They have to stay thin and fit. Unless you're selling coke the profit margin on them is horrible. If you're going to make any money you need drinkers. Blue collar, students going wild, gays, or gangsters. FIND a NICHE and stick with it.

A good club averages 3-4 drinks a person - targeting students, blue collar or gangster can push that to 10 or more. The profit difference on that is HUGE. My Friday nights when i ran a club was targeted at the native population with higher income and gangsters. they averaged over 10 drinks each. The 'good looking' people clubs near by where I was did 2-3. I did events Saturdays and they were always different.

Work with promoters. Grind though them till you find some good ones. Just building it does not work.

I got killed by financing cause I owned the building and was robbed a few times in the end. My most profitable time was the last 4-5 months of the club once I got the game figured out. Refinancing a commercial building after the stock market crash was almost impossible. Don't own the building - lease it. Less expense and way less headaches. If I wanted to do another club I'd be able to hit the ground running with what I know now and be profitable from the start, but honestly I want nothing to do with that business. Dirty cops, dirty liqueur inspectors and 2-3 different gov't inspectors of one sort or another hurrassed the shit out of me. Fuck that. I never wanted a club in the first place - just backed someone else who fucked it up and robbed me.


commercial stage lighting companies are the biggest ripoffs on the planet. you can buy all the lighting you need online or at your local sound stores for 1/7 of what the lighting guys charge and in the end they arn't good. do it yourself or have a trusted electrician do it. basically you want places to clamp different effect lighting on all sent to switches and a controll board. I never found one lighting company worth spitting on. I lost 10's of thousands to them and in the end tor out their shit and redid it myself for 1/10 the cost and it was 10X more effect. The LED stuff out there now from american DJ is pretty decent. The idea that you need 'commerical quality' is complete bullshit for any club under 800 people.

some wise words here I can expand on I learned the hard way.

I agree on the bathrooms completely. Lots of pissers in the mens - TONS - 1 per 50 total people but you need like maybe 1 shitter though per 300 total people int he club for the mens. If men can't pee they can't drink more and less revenue so the men above anything have to have TONS of urinals. They have to able in a packed club to walk in and pee without waiting.
When I took my club over from my ex-partner the woman's washroom was shit. I totally rebuilt it tiling the whole thing and having a huge makeup area with lots of mirrors. It doubled the amount of women comming into the club. WOmen need a makeup area and it needs to be cool, clean and neat with an area to spread their crap out on. LOTS of mirrors. Tile isn't that pricey and it's almost indestructible. Frilly things get broken fast. Going like a roman tile theme worked really well and once completed I got amazing reviews on the bathroom. Also toilets are HUGE concern. I got ones that had an air bladder in them that forced anything upto donut size down them. Nothing got clogged. The worst thing you can have is clogged toilets and if you're in an old venue redoing plumbing is way more expensive than just changing the toilets for air bladder ones. (they look the almost the same but when you flush then it sounds like a jet wooshing off)

Coat checks need to be able to handle 1 staff per hundred people in the club at closing -(much less the rest of the night but getting coats back FAST is key) ie - 500 person club - 5 people in coat check getting jackets. If people have a hard time leaving it's the last thing they remember and dont' come back.

A separate bathroom is great for talent - I had that with a separate room for them. A single unisex bathroom is fine for this. Gets you much better acts and upgrades the feel for the local acts that arnt' used to high end treatment.

As for the Good looking people comments... I believe honestly it's probably the worst thing you can market to. The hottest crowds are the hot tiny girls and the super hot guys. They don't drink. They have to stay thin and fit. Unless you're selling coke the profit margin on them is horrible. If you're going to make any money you need drinkers. Blue collar, students going wild, gays, or gangsters. FIND a NICHE and stick with it.

A good club averages 3-4 drinks a person - targeting students, blue collar or gangster can push that to 10 or more. The profit difference on that is HUGE. My Friday nights when i ran a club was targeted at the native population with higher income and gangsters. they averaged over 10 drinks each. The 'good looking' people clubs near by where I was did 2-3. I did events Saturdays and they were always different.

Work with promoters. Grind though them till you find some good ones. Just building it does not work.

I got killed by financing cause I owned the building and was robbed a few times in the end. My most profitable time was the last 4-5 months of the club once I got the game figured out. Refinancing a commercial building after the stock market crash was almost impossible. Don't own the building - lease it. Less expense and way less headaches. If I wanted to do another club I'd be able to hit the ground running with what I know now and be profitable from the start, but honestly I want nothing to do with that business. Dirty cops, dirty liqueur inspectors and 2-3 different gov't inspectors of one sort or another hurrassed the shit out of me. Fuck that. I never wanted a club in the first place - just backed someone else who fucked it up and robbed me.


commercial stage lighting companies are the biggest ripoffs on the planet. you can buy all the lighting you need online or at your local sound stores for 1/7 of what the lighting guys charge and in the end they arn't good. do it yourself or have a trusted electrician do it. basically you want places to clamp different effect lighting on all sent to switches and a controll board. I never found one lighting company worth spitting on. I lost 10's of thousands to them and in the end tor out their shit and redid it myself for 1/10 the cost and it was 10X more effect. The LED stuff out there now from american DJ is pretty decent. The idea that you need 'commerical quality' is complete bullshit for any club under 800 people.


projection TVs are great for music videos and super cheap now - like $300 on ebay - do not use screens -white drywall. in the dark of a club 2000 lumes shows up great (more is too bright but lighting companies will want to sell you brighter ones - dont' do it)- 5-10 of those is amazing and changes the feel of the club to whatever is played on the videos. hi def not necessary - club haze makes it useless - reg def is all you need and looks great

also cages and stripper poles for the girls to dance in or to hire dancers is huge. Focus cages around the bar - have two focal points in a room - stage and bar. there needs to be a reason to hang out around the bar and dancing cages work great for that

anyway i hope that helps - good luck with it. montreal is a good place to do a club if you have your ducks in a row

Let in only about 20 people, otherwise its too crowded.

http://photos-c.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos..._6179428_n.jpg

i can't tell but i hope that is a bubble machine and not confetti. I had a promoter bring in a confetti gun once - it was a NIGHTMEAR to clean. the shit gets EVERYWHERE and places you really don't want paper (heated areas with wires)... plus it gets all over your patrons and they are mad later picking it off themselves. Confetti BAD

I became all about easy to clean and maintain

I was confused by that shot as well. I thought maybe it was a foam machine or something like that.

maybe
 

Timewarp local edition u can make,depends what ure clients listen (timewarp.de bigest techno production in the world).only in germany and holland there are till now..why not and there?!