Steve,
First-thanks for spending time with us in the Café! We really appreciate your time and the benefit of your experience.
Second-You have had a lot of experience in working and operating a venue with your show as the standing attraction. Can you comment on both the performance and business dynamic of that arrangement?
Issues like keeping new crowds coming, advertising, issues no one would think of connected to that if they hadnt worked a similar situation. And again, thank you for sharing with us!

Hi Steve,
I used to spend a lot of time at the old Brook Farm Inn and remember it as a terrific place, with something new going on all the time. You, Bob and Scotty were terrific. I always wondered what happened to cause you to move to the Wheaton Plaza location. It just seemed to change the dynamic so much.
Don

Ufo you ask about "...keeping new crowds coming, advertisng..." I am far from an expert, but here's some of what I do and don't do. Most advertising is predicated on the population, in LA county that's 10 million people, so the broadstroke advertisng in print and TV that's used by our competition... like Disneyland, Universal Studios, Staples Center, Nokia Theater, Music Center, etc. is cost prohibitive for us.

We do, however, from time to time, get free promotion in places like the LA Times and on local/national TV shows and news programs which comes in the form of publicity. This is mostly by luck and isn't too easy to orchestrate in places like New York or LA because on any given day several big movie stars, like Angelina Joley or George Clooney, are promoting their charity, and captains of industry,like Richard Branson or Trump, are getting all the free publicity space with their new projects in town. Plus nowadays all major media outlets are owned by six companies and they have all their own movies, TV shows, and video games to publicize.

Word-of-mouth works for us and probably around twenty percent of any given audience are repeat customers. Our audiences bring back their friends, relatives, neighbors, business associates, employees, and so on. Some have seen our little show ten times or more... and if for some reason a particular trick or joke that they've seen before isn't done they will ask about it after the show.

Various group sales are important, the most frequent are birthdays... these are frequent but small groups, mostly in the 15 to 30 person range. But, every birthday usually brings a minumum of two new parties in the future. We are hooked up with several bus tour companies that bring us senior groups, foreign tourists, and groups like Lions, Kiwanis, Shriners. On a less frequent basis we do fundraisers and corporate events, which pay well and put us in front of influential people.

Companies with 500 employees or more are sometimes members of a company that sells discount tickets to employees. This company sells tickets to all the major sporting events, theme parks and theaters, and they do very well for us. We're hooked in with hotels in our area who reccomend our show. Our magic store is open seven days a week and we pitch the show as much as tricks.

The single biggest source of new blood is http://www.magicopolis.com some hear about us for the first time from our website and can buy their tickets online. If you google "Magicopolis" you will find all the links and mentions we get from outside sources that drive people to us. I'm not a tech saavy guy and our website is not state-of-the-art but we try to add content periodically and look at the site the way sales brochures were used in the olden days.

Even with all that, and a bunch of other stuff I failed to mention, still, not every show sells out.

Steve,
Great info. Thank you and here's to the day when "they all sell out!"
I really appreciate your time.

DStachowiak I wonder about that too. I didn't think the new location was a good idea, mine was the minority opinion on the issue, however, and that's when I made my move out west. At the time, Farm business on the weekend was at capacity but nothing much was happening during the week. The feeling was there would be foot traffic at the mall that would enhance weekday business. Also, there was a new multiplex movie theater slated to open adjacent to the location, plus a new investor came on board who was gung-ho about the move.

Thanks Steve,
I guess the weekends are what I remember. I suppose the points in favor of the move sounded good at the time, but I really think the unique character of the Inn was a big factor, never to be matched at the mall location.
Thanks again for your time!
Don