Everyday Low Pricing
sinclair
Strip Club Nation
A strip club I go to occasionally has $20 topless lap dances and $30 nude lap dances. Every Tuesday, they discount the dances to $10 topless and $20 nude, which are much more reasonable prices. As a result, Tuesdays get crowds like it is a primetime Friday or Saturday night. On Tuesdays, this club has a monopoly on strip club patrons in the metro area due to these unbeatable prices. Also, this same club will do 2 for 1 dances about once per hour on most nights that are not Tuesdays. The songs are not even cut shorter. A lot of guys are disciplined to not buy dances, except for when the 2-for-1 specials happen.
So if the club is able to stay profitable by having discount dance days and constantly discounts dances, why does the club just not move to an everyday low price model like Walmart? They could undercut all of the other local strip clubs and take away their business just like Walmart did to chain grocery stores and mom and pop stores. While the profit margin per lap dance would be lower, the same amount of profit or a greater amount of profit would be made on a higher volume of private dances sold.
So if the club is able to stay profitable by having discount dance days and constantly discounts dances, why does the club just not move to an everyday low price model like Walmart? They could undercut all of the other local strip clubs and take away their business just like Walmart did to chain grocery stores and mom and pop stores. While the profit margin per lap dance would be lower, the same amount of profit or a greater amount of profit would be made on a higher volume of private dances sold.
18 comments
Bargain basement prices would eventually piss dancers off. There's something to be said for dancers not working for volume production and instead trying to get non-bargain hunters into VIP. One $300 room equals 30 dances at $10.
Are you talking about Polekatz?
I like PoleKatz, the dances just aren't as high mileage as i want to make it a main club, even on Tuesdays. Not that ultra high mileage isn't possible with some girls, but with the open dance area that provides deterrence not just from the bouncers but also from other dancers and customers, it's just hard for dancers to get comfortable, especially on busy times like Tuesdays and weekends where they have their best lineups.
The reason that ownership/management won't just make every day like Tuesdays is because they make way more on weekends than on Tuesdays. On Tuesdays, they make a lot more than they would if they didn't have the promotion, but nothing like the weekends. Also there are customers that only come on Tuesdays like i did and do, so i don't think there is an unlimited customer base that would come if they did it everyday.
See on Tuesdays, the girls make the same amount per dance as weekends (even more if you factor the 4 for $100, where the dancer takes a discount to sell more dances) at $10 per topless dance and $20 per nude dance. They normally pay the club $10 per dance, but don't pay this on Tuesdays. So the club isn't making any money from dances on Tuesdays as opposed to weekends where they are making 1/2 to 1/3 of everything the dancers are making from dances which is substantial when you consider how many dancers and customers there are. The rent is also slightly higher i believe at $100 per shift instead of $80. The cover i think is also higher ($10 instead of $6) although they have text that waives the cover. I'm not sure how many people use the text. Finally, the CR and Ultra Lounge are very hard sells on Tuesdays. Who in their right mind is going to pay $250-$1000 for a quarter to full hour in a heavily surveillanced room when $300 will last you an hour in the chump station for similar activities? The rooms aren't that much easier to sell on weekends, but the difference isn't as drastic.
Even though the club makes a lot more money on Tuesdays from valet, paid covers (i'm not sure of the percentage of customers that pay though), drink sales, dancer rents, and the occasional rooms, making it win-win-win for owner, dancers and customers, this strategy only really works when it's used like it is currently being used. The promotion brings in new customers who might actually come during the weekends after experiencing the club. If it was every day, the club loses money from their cut of dances and lost room sales (unless they drastically cut room prices), but too many dancers will want to work every day initially diluting the dancer lineup but increasing competition and then later the average earnings will regress to the mean and dancers might try to out dirty (relatively) each other to get more money as some might do now.
I just don't see the club ever doing that, everyday low pricing. What i do wish is for every other good club to employ something like this once a week and implement it the same way. Club 390 does a similar $10/$20 promotion on Wednesdays, but the dance fee the dancers pay is only halved, not eliminated ($2.50 for topless and $5 for nude instead of $5/$10 respectively) and the dances are cut to 2 minutes or less on average instead of 3 to 3.5 minutes on most other days and times, making it slightly more economic for topless dances where the girls tend to mail it in, or slightly less economic for nude dances where the girls give similar effort and they keep more per minute as well (about $7.5 a minute compared to about $6 a minute on other days; topless dances they make about $3.5 a minute compared to about $4.5 a minute on other days). So it's just a gimmick that that doesn't really have a real benefit to anybody in the club in terms of value, just differently packaged marketing. And it's reflected by the average lineup in terms of talent and quantity (only marginally higher than other weekdays) and how busy it gets (also only marginally higher).
Atlantis has a weekend promotion where they discount dances (all dances are $30 whether the girl gets naked or not) $10 if you get two of them and some club merchandise as well about once an hour or so late in the night. The only thing i like about the promotion is that if you're already in the chump station when they announce it, it takes around 6-8 minutes for the actual promotion to start while they're playing a couple burner songs, but these songs don't count as dances while you're with a girl. But the bouncer/counter will come up to you and ask if you'll do the promotion where only an idiot would say no. I just say yes with the girl on my lap already naked, and when he goes away, we just resume as we did before essentially getting two free songs albeit a little shorter (although i do factor a tip for these), where technically, she's just supposed to stay on your lap until the actual promotion begins. When the actual promotion begins, the songs are also usually a little longer than regular songs and discounted $10 as well, so that promotion has some win in it, despite initially not sounding like much, but you need to play/time it right with the right girl.
But most clubs are either too greedy or short sighted to try something like what PoleKatz does on Tuesdays. I think Daisy Dooks in Davenport, IA does something similar on Mondays (topless dances are BOGO free) and Tuesdays ("premium" dances and rooms are BOGOF) and Southern Comfort nearby does it on Wednesdays and Thursdays (BOGO). I don't know how the fees are handled at those clubs though, probably not like PoleKatz because they still force customers to spend the same amount of money, they just get twice as much. Also Gold Club in Stone Park (the sister club of PoleKatz) also does a similar promotion, $10 dances, on Thursdays. The girls don't keep as much because regular dances (topless only, ugh) are still $30, so if the girls paid $10 a dance before keeping $20, they still have to sell twice as many dances to make as much as they do on regular days. So you can see that the girls there don't give the same effort and the top talent often doesn't show up on Thursdays and the customers aren't as interested and don't fill up the place. So you might need tiered dancing for something like this to work properly (satisfy dancer and customer and consequently owner).
Those are just my long winded observations and take on it.
But what I learned quickly is that when dancers would come around seeking dances, I would tell them to come back when they were offering 2 for 1's. 99% of the time the dancer would tell me that she could do that right now. Which turned out to be a much better deal because during the announced 2 fers that lap dance rooms were crowded and no privacy. With more privacy mileage went up.
That's actually not how it works at that particular club (incidentally a top 40 or even a top 25 club, i don't really agree). The girls makes $20 a nude dance ($10 for a topless) no matter what day of the week. So the hottest girls (and other girls) treat Tuesdays like Fridays or Saturdays as they can sell even more dances and make even more money. Since the hottest girls work that day, a lot of customers also come and give the club money, but not from dances. The club can sustain this and still make money, but they're making money hand over fist on weekends. It is easily the busiest club in the area on weekends and like a weekend on Tuesdays. It's unreal club hopping from a meh club on Tuesday than walking into that club later that night.
I know that people like to shit all over the Admiral Theatre too, but that place also gets crazy busy on weekends (similar to PoleKatz) and i think part of it beside the hottest naked dancers in the area is also the comparatively less expensive prices. $300 an hour for dances compared to $500+ and $10 nude floor dance albeit with very little contact. The dances in the private rooms are actually comparable to PoleKatz contact with the right dancer these days. If they did a similar promotion during the week, i think they would be just as busy.
I am in sales and we do the same thing. For example a product we have is on “sale” 10 months of of the year. We make a certain margin that may be above our minimum but not at our maximum expectation. Those two months it’s not on sale we hit at our max margin, although we don’t sell nearly as much during those two months, we still do sell and are able to “pad” our margins a little going into the sale time.
Best part, if anyone buys during the next 10 months we can show them on paper that they are getting a “deal” because it’s on “sale” and the customer feels like they are getting special treatment. So it’s a win win. If we had it at the same lower price every month of the year, then we couldn’t tell the customer they were getting it on “sale” and then they wouldn’t think they were getting a good “deal” even though they really are.
Another reason is no club would want to be branded as cheap, that attracts negative attention from some lowly gents, and girls would prefer to work in more upscale places where they can upsell.
So, if you work hard and get more dances or VIPs, you make more, but club gets the same?