SW and TUSCL: United at last

If SW were my cuddlebuddy right now, I'd spoon her and not even press my hardon into her lower back, I love her so much.

I don't have a business degree but I don't think raising prices is the way to attract more customers

On the other hand, if you're the guy who stays back, you end up with less customer competition and 10% isn't all that big of an increase.

It will actually likely lead to an effective price cut, since less customer competition will give the strippers less leverage to demand the higher-priced options. E.g., instead of spending on the $550 VIP because there are 2 or 3 other guys who would spend up to $250, you're the big spender at $250 and end up saving $300 and are likely to get a similar experience to what would have cost $500 before the price increase.

ppwh: I've never seen that happen in all the years I've been doing this. Instead, the number of customers goes down, and as it does, so does the quality and number of women.

^ yeah, it's a self-reinforcing SC death-spiral

It’s strippernomics. The cornerstone is that dancers deserve to make $X and it’s up to whoever shows up in the club to make it happen, dammit.

I have seen it happen a couple of times where individual lap dances effectively became VIP because the champagne room was priced out of the market, dancers offering their own specials, etc.

I've posted this before. I knew a dancer that lived in Tampa but had family in Atlanta. She worked at OZ in Clearwater FL and at Follies in Atlanta when visiting relatives. Dance prices at Follies are $10, at Oz they are $35. So I asked her why work at Follies. She said because she makes more more there due to volume.

I look at it this way. At $35 a dance I'm not buying a dance unless the dancer is my perfect match and then I'd only get one dance. Chances are I'm not even walking in the door.

I will get 4-6 warm up dances at $10 with my fave who works me up to go to VIP and then I go and spend more money in there on her. If the initial dance was $35 I may never have met her because I probably wouldn't go to the club in the first place.

Difference in my spending
$0-35 expensive club prices
$150-200 reasonable club prices

If you are a dancer, where do you want to dance? And I'm only one customer. With the right game you can make bank.

Like scat I’ve discussed this issue with dancers who work in cheap vs expensive clubs. Several have said the volume in the cheap club definitely makes up for the higher prices. They work harder at the cheaper club but they make more money.

This is a poor business decision. The attendance is down - so they raise prices? In my opinion - they should do something to bring in more customers. Take a look at competing clubs - see how attendance is at those clubs. If the attendance is down in the area - see if the local industry has been hit by an economic downturn. If the area is getting hurt economically - raising prices won’t help.

I think several guys have already mentioned it - but lowering prices might bring in more business and $$$ as the customers may buy more dances - and spend more $$$ while in the club.

The simple model of charging the current 4 customers $25 instead of $20 - per dance - might not get $100 vs $80. Some customers might not get any dances - so the impact of a price increase might reduce revenue.

I think they need to determine the reason for the lack of customers - and then make a change based on their findings.

There's a SC here, Club Fantasies, that has had customer volume problems for years now. They recently did an interior renovation and raised prices, leading to widespread complaints from the few guys who are still regulars there.

I can't speak on it directly; it's been years since I last visited. But this did the exact opposite of encouraging me to give it a try.

Too bad. Used to be a great club.

I think the phenomena ppwh mentions is real, but it is short lived. I saw it when Rhino in WPB started fucking with their prices a while back. The customers left first, so there was a period when dancers were there willing to take less to get something. The club raised daytime dance prices from $10 to $15 so they could take a $5 cut of each dance. Some dancers were doing $10 dances and just keeping 5, many were doing 2-4-25 or 4-4-50 type offers. No such bulk discounts were offered prior, and I was a guy who'd often go in and get 5-10-15 dances from the same girl regularly. A lot of girls started offering OTC as well. Prior to that, there was very little in terms of extras at that place.

Eventually, the girls all moved on to other places. The club continued to raise prices up to $20 & added a once per visit fee of $10 to use the lap dance area. I stopped going in aside from an occasional visit a few times a year at most, when I do go its always pretty dead. I've even been in on a few Fri/Sat nights and its been less busy that the previous day shifts.

The one exception is Tuesday's. They still do $10 dances on Tuesday, and its always busiest on Tuesday. It's not just because its the guys don't want to pay for the more expensive dances, but that's also the day they have the best/most girls for the most part. It's amazing to me that mgmt hasn't caught on & done the math. There's no way the loss off the extra dance fee's on aren't more than offset by bar sales on Tuesdays. The girls obviously have figured out they do better selling more dances at lower prices. It's a sad situation where a bunch of strippers catch on to something faster than management does.

I just find it strange that ownership would raise prices as they would benefit the least from increases as the girls still get the majority of the money. Usually it's the girls complaining or refusing to do dances/VIPs for a too low price and they either collectively demand that prices rise or they do it themselves by upcharging. But the VIPs ($100-500) don't sound low (pretty average to me) and customers still aren't biting or coming in general so this seems like an ass backwards strategy, smh.

To succeed in business, you either need to be the best or be the cheapest. Follies is the cheapest. They know damned good and well they are not the best, but you tend to get your money's worth. I don't know what club is raising prices to compensate for low customer flow; but you need to increase the number and quality of dancers on shift to justify it. Scarlett's and Cheetahs seem to have the highest prices in most of the markets where I have found them, but they usually have the most attractive girls. You can survive by being a middling club like Lido's in Cocoa Beach, Babes in Ft. Myers, or any BT; but successful business usually need to choose to be the best or the least expensive.

^ different hounds may have different definitions of 'best'

Cheap doesn’t work. Cheap is $1 sushi, three days beyond expiration date. Cheap is 300 pound strippers with missing teeth for $5 a dance.

Value combined with service works. Hot looking, high mileage strippers for $10 a dance.

Welp. That was nice while it lasted. Seemed like SW has reverted back to the mean, which dissonant strippers agreeing with the club, smh..

Back to my original point. Sometimes the best thing you can do is ride the wave and avail yourself of the new effective market rate that results from less customer competition. In those situations, I have seen it where the dancer crew left and the newer dancers took their place. Enough of the newer ones were less demanding money-wise and didn't have the pressure from dancers with more seniority that would have otherwise been there to keep effective prices at an artificially high level.

Of course, this will vary by market. If there are 10 other comparable clubs within easy driving distance, this kind of decision will probably just doom the club.

Quote from sw:
"1. the customers will see you as luxury."

No. Just because something has a high price tag does not make it a luxury. Of course most luxury items have a high price tag but thats not the same.

"2. you will make more money for the same amount of effort"

More money for the same effort but net gain will be less.

> More money for the same effort but net gain will be less.

More money for the same amount of time spent on paid dances. That's not the same as money for effort.

Having to talk to 10 guys to sell two dances and getting rejected 9 times sounds like more effort and emotional wear to me than having to talk to 5 guys to sell ten dances.

-->"Back to my original point. Sometimes the best thing you can do is ride the wave and avail yourself of the new effective market rate that results from less customer competition"

Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. If that's good enough for the Marines, by gum, it's good enough for tuscl.

I agree that one should always look for advantage in change, even if that change on the surface seems to be negative -- but I'm also saying that 100% of the time, IME raising prices during a downturn reduces quality of the experience. Still, I'm always on the lookout for less customer competition, and even among a less attractive shift, "all it takes is one", as they say in PL-land. I agree ppwh that in theory, a 10% price rise shouldn't get you screaming that the sky is falling, and I don't doubt you might have a different experience than I have; but the clubs here that have done that have not fared well

I do think the action more likely to lead to better experiences is, if you're the type of PL who tends to get comfortable with a small number of clubs (guilty as charged), this is the perfect motivator to give some other clubs a chance.

Club owners are often between a rock and a hard place. The rock is LE, and the hard place is the dancers wanting to do more to get money, or wanting the dance prices that they get in some other places, like San Francisco, saying that they should get that, even though they do less, because they are just as hot looking.

This is why the best of the best are the clubs where the owners just get as many girls there as possible, and then just look the other way. Experienced dancers have always insisted that this is where they can get the most money.

Our Mexican Bar underground sometimes is like this, but still usually not like some of the wildest places we read about in other parts of the country.

At the other extreme, totally planed out psychologically, is Deja Vu and its various "Business Models", always running more restricted than they really need to for that metro's LE, just so they can rake in more money, taking it off of CHUMPS who are unable to see how rigged the situation is, and all the ways they are being played!

SJG

Blues Rock, or Progressive Rock, which do you like? I know the standard explanation is that the latter evolved from the former, and you might be able to get the best of both. But I will still stand with Blues Rock most of the time.

This is absolutely awesome:
https://youtu.be/rXJQb7aIxfk?t=5m56s

"Having to talk to 10 guys to sell two dances and getting rejected 9 times sounds like more effort and emotional wear to me than having to talk to 5 guys to sell ten dances."

I agree 100% but we are talking about sw and "stripper logic".

"... Having to talk to 10 guys to sell two dances and getting rejected 9 times sounds like more effort and emotional wear to me than having to talk to 5 guys to sell ten dances ..."

IDK - having 10 guys to potentially sell dances to sounds better than having 5 guys to potentially sell dances to - I'd think the former would be a better sales proposition

> IDK - having 10 guys to potentially sell dances to sounds better than having 5 guys to potentially sell dances to

Agreed. I was getting at the hypothetical dancer not having time to talk to the other 5 guys because she was busy with paying customers.

Subra's OP, that kind of stuff is the strip club version of Supply Side Voodoo economics.

SJG