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Part 2, as promised.

3 Impact of Customer Type with Respect to ‘The Club’

I am a customer, not a club owner or manager. So everything I say here is seen thought the eyes of a customer. Also, I’m going to try to distinguish between ‘decent’ club owners who want to run a real business and ‘bad’ club owners who act more like pimps.

Let me start off by saying that many if not most clubs treat ALL customers as if there are in the “everybody else” category. However, I’m still going to break this part of the discussion down into the same categories as before to help layout why I think strip club are the way they are and why most CLUBS do not cater to regulars.

It is easy (and probably accurate) to assume that in most clubs, especially the ‘badly’ run ones, the attitude is “get every penny from these dumb chumps NOW!” (Don’t you feel like a valued customer now?) However, I have concluded there is more going on when it comes to strip clubs, and I believe differentiating between the two types of regulars in a key component of this.

Many well run businesses with decent owners want repeat business. It has to be much easier to get a customer to return after a good time compared to getting a new customer in the door for the first time, correct? Repeat business is good for a club’s bottom line, but IMO the type of repeat business makes a difference when it comes to strip clubs.

3.1 “Regulars with Favorites:”

A regular who has a favorite has a very specific reason to return to a club. The more times this regular visits their favorite, the more money for that dancer and the club there is. Sounds simple right? Plus, odds are this ‘favorite’ is good enough to draw the attention of other customers. So, probably, this favorite also helps drive spending of other customers.

An upstanding, chivalrous, ‘good-guy’ type of manager may look at a situation like this and think: Jane is making this club a ton of money. I had better take care of her so she doesn’t leave and take all this revenue with her. Maybe I offer here a 60-40 split instead of 50-50 split. Or, I’m going to lose Jane because stripping is affecting her M-F 9-5 job. I’d better offer her that she can work just Fri & Sat nights.

Sadly, most strip club owners and manager don’t see it this way. These guys think, once I make a deal with one, then all of them will expect a special deal. Or they think, if we don’t force everybody to take a few weekday shifts, then we will not have any dancers in house on the weekdays. IMO, most clubs doesn’t want customers to have favorites because they don’t want any dancer, not even a top shelf dancer, to have any kind of leverage with the club.

Bottom-line, the repeat revenue is good for the club, but a dancer with leverage (in the form regular customers) is seen as a bad thing the club owners and managers (especially the ‘bad’ ones). This is also can be true of dancers who are making significantly more than other house girls regardless of whether or not the money is mainly from regulars.

3.2 “Regulars Who Likes Variety:”

A regular who likes variety is probably the ideal customer for a club as long as this customer isn’t expecting special treatment. The repeat revenue is good for the club. This customer isn’t ‘committed’ to one dancer, so the club doesn’t have to deal with a dancer ‘being special.’ As long as any given dancer doesn’t have too many regulars she doesn’t have any leverage with the club. She can’t use her influence on the revenue coming from her regulars to ask for better hours, or a better cut of the money. Or worse, she can’t leave and take her regulars with here. Most clubs doesn’t want customers to have favorites because of this.

A regular who likes variety can also help fuel dancer competition. In general, I think clubs (more so with ‘bad’ clubs) want the dancers to compete of customers. It helps prevent one dancer from being responsible for a large chuck of the revenue stream, and prevents her from having leverage with the club. This also helps keep dancers from being complacent. If a dancer ‘knows’ she has three regulars coming in tonight, she doesn’t have to work the crowd. Clubs don’t like this because this dancer isn’t helping get money out of the “everyone else” customers when she’s moping around wait for her sugar daddies.

In a sense, regulars who like variety make the job easier for club owners and managers. Plus, the clubs doesn’t automatically have to do anything special for this group of customers compared to “everybody else” customers as long as the ‘competition’ is on.

Most clubs prefer it when the dancers are ‘hungry’ to sell. I realize this is a bit dark, but in the ‘bad-er’ clubs with want-to-be-pimps in charge, they like the dancers being desperate to sell. Don’t get me wrong here. I personally don’t think desperation sells as well and enjoyment. However, there has to be some level of desperation to get into stripping in the first place. The less chivalrous owners and managers don’t have a problem leaning on that desperation.

3.3 “Everybody Else:”

Regular or not, most clubs, especially the bad ones, will treat you as if you are just “everybody else.” That is the way it is. However, I also want to say this. I think it is a bad assumption to assume that club owners and managers are too lazy or too inept to recognize who the repeat customers. I am sure there are clubs that are too lazy or too inept, but I am also sure there are clubs that do notice who the repeat customers are choose not to act on it. Never underestimate.

Think of it this way. The want-to-be-pimps treat all their dancers poorly. They don’t want their dancers having favorites because it pisses on their power trip. They don’t treat the higher earning dancers better because they don’t want the higher earning dancers having more leverage. No dancer is special in their eyes. Why should customers be any different? All customers, regular or not, get treated basically the same because no one is special. It’s all they know. It is how these owners and managers are wired. The only people who do get special treatment are “friends” of the owners or some kind of celebrity that feeds the ego trip of the owners and managers. They are simply not out there trying to run a good business.

When the club sees you as an “everybody else customer” then you can be pretty sure the attitude is going to be “get every penny from these dumb chumps NOW!” I’ve said this before, but this is especially true in many tourist areas. Las Vegas is a good example. 99%+ of customers who come into a club will not be back on a weekly or monthly basis.

4 The Ratio of Customers Types: The Great Unknown

For a long time I’ve though that the strip club screen was dependent on ‘regulars’ with ‘regulars’ possibly constituting a majority of the cash flow. However, the more I have thought, the more I started to realize that ‘regulars’ (both with favorites and those that like variety) are probably a minority of the customers coming into most clubs most of the time. Just because I WAS a regular, didn’t mean I was in the majority.

I don’t know what a realistic ratio of ‘regulars’ to ‘everybody else’ should be. For the sake of argument, let us consider two cases: 1 in 10 customers is a regular vs. 1 in 100 customers is regular. (Granted, reality is probably somewhere in between.)

Let us also assume that a ‘regular’ customer spends 10 times what the average ‘everybody else’ customer spends per visit. So a ‘regular’ spends $500 per trip and the ‘everybody else’ spends $50 per trip. (This is probably exaggerated. A realistic ratio is probably much less than a factor of 10.)

If one out of every ten customers is a ‘regular’ then: one ‘regular’ spends $500 and the nine casual customers spend a total of $450. That one of ten ‘regular’ means a lot to a club financially, about half of revenue. But, those true ‘regulars’ don’t come anywhere close to 1/10 customers through the door, right???

If one out of every hundred customers is a ‘regular’ then: one ‘regular’ spends $500 and the ninety-nine casual customers spend a total of $4950. Now $500 out of ~ $5500 isn’t insignificant, but that one ‘regular’ doesn’t carry as much weight so to speak.

Point is, I really question whether or not the money spent by ‘regulars’ really has a noticeable impact on a club’s bottom line, especially if ‘regulars’ are actually a small minority.

5 Final Thoughts

On another blog there have been discussions about clubs taking larger cuts of the sales from the dancer. The clubs are taking bigger cuts to offset customers spending less. It’s easy to think this would be counterproductive. If dancers are receiving a small cut of the sales, they would end up with less cash to take home. Dancer are then more likely to quit or more to a different club.

I think the less scrupulous clubs owners and managers actually see this as a good thing (as strange as that may sound). Higher turnover means less development of favorites and less change of a dancer having leverage on revenue. ‘Hungrier’ dancer have to ‘compete’ harder to make a sale instead of relying on a sugar daddy.

Now, there probably isn’t a solid conclusion in there anywhere. However, maybe just maybe, the convoluted world of strip clubs maybe makes more sense when competition and ‘no favorites’ are the goals of the clubs.