NO SUB-STITUTE away. Kenny says that “He was a great guy and I still miss him. Paul and I managed to negotiate a deal and bought the lease and we reopened almost three years to the day the club had closed. In effect it was a brand new club on the same site, with a new broom.” "We felt like we were starting all over again. Since then every year has been a new challenge. But we are still all about new music, and our musical direction is as progressive as ever. We’ve taken the club out with its own space too. For instance we did a mystery tour from George Square to the Campsie Hills – and we have run parties on boats at Loch Lomond and at Loch Katrine and we took the Sub Club party to a famous old barge in Paris ‘Batofar’. We’ve also actively engaged with Scotland’s festivals. At one point there were about 13 festivals, it’s died down a bit now, but we realised that we need to embrace festivals and be part of it, otherwise the summer would be even more challenging than it is. We now work around the festival calendar – we couldn’t beat them, so we joined them. This year we had our first Sub Club tent at RockNess and it was great and we have been involved with T in the Park for a number of years.” He continues, “It’s all about keeping our club relevant to our customers, and to new customers. It’s like a conveyor belt – people get on at one end, and get older and get off. We need to keep new customers coming.” But he feels that nightclubs do get the ‘thin edge of the wedge’ when it comes to licensing. He comments, “Night clubs are a soft target for licensing chiefs. We’ve never had a single glass or bottle incident at our club, yet we have to serve in plastic. We can’t sell champagne – it’s okay if clubs have a VIP area, but goes against our grain to have a VIP area, so we can’t sell it. On the beer front we buy cans instead of serving beer in plastic – even then that has been a battle with the beer companies. I can understand why, because this glass ban is not worldwide, but the time it takes to decant bottles of beer into plastic, makes it much more convenient for us to sell cans. We’ve a two hour window to make money and we need to serve customers quickly. As a result we sell tonnes of Red Stripe, and once we persuaded Heineken to let us sell their stumpy cans we increased Heineken sales from 3 cases to 25 cases per week! The problem for us is that not all products are available in cans, and cans are usually more expensive so that can affect our bottom line.” SEPTEMBER 11 DRAM
18
He continues, “As far as safety goes, as far as I am concerned it starts at the door. A sensible door policy is essential when it comes to creating a safe environment. If people don’t feel safe, they can’t enjoy themselves. We’ve always been very stringent about who we let in and the results speak for themselves.” He also believes the Scottish government has missed a trick with the 2005 licensing act. He says, “The new act was a huge opportunity for the government to radically address the issues with the Scottish drinks culture. But it has not happened. There are some real anomalies - for instance it’s okay to drink and gamble until 6am but it is not okay to drink and dance until the same time. Since when was dancing more harmful than gambling? If we are fit and proper to sell alcohol then we should be able to decide when we close. Some places would stay open late, others wouldn’t. But this one size fits all policy doesn’t work. There are too many venues open until 3am, and there’s not enough business to go around. Glasgow’s policy of ‘let the market decide’, has caused a saturated market. That’s why people have to price cut. We don’t do that but we still provide a quality offering. We have DJs who come from places like Brazil and Germany – we pay the same price for them as Fabric in London does, but here they can only play for a maximum of two hours! They are always amazed we have to close at 3am.” As to the future of clubbing, says Mike, “I wish I had a crystal ball. Music is more accessible now than ever, and people access it in a different way. Everyone is now an expert. They download MP3s and think the quality is good enough…it’s not. Youngsters today take a lot more for granted as far as entertainment goes, they have so much more at their fingertips, that’s why they are reluctant to pay a premium for high quality. They expect high quality to be the same price as low quality. They are also prepared to travel round the world to go to a party and to go to festivals. It’s a different landscape from 10 years ago when the highlight of the week was to go clubbing at the weekend. But we will continue to concentrate on providing a high quality experience, and preserve the integrity of the Sub Club as a brand, we will take the Sub Club as far as we can, but we will try to keep it relevant to our own marketplace. The day we stop we will be going backwards.”