After Insider's Property Leaders: Shaping Cities lunch, we caught up with our panellists to hear about how they plan to move into the London market, as well as how Factory International is revolutionising Manchester's arts and culture offering. We also heard from the event's main sponsor, about the importance of such events in Manchester.
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00:00So, I'm Daniel Bolger, I'm the co-founder of what was originally Ghetto Golf in 2016,
00:16but we rebranded in 2020 to Golf Fang and we're the overarching company of the Big Fang
00:22Collective.
00:23Started in 2016 with my business partner, Kip, he's also my best mate at school.
00:29It's quite a nice story, two guys that weren't really supposed to hit off on anything big
00:37in the eyes of other people probably when we were kids, but yeah, with some driving
00:43ambition and a real good idea at the right time, we hit it off in Liverpool and then
00:49went on to open another six venues with our eighth venue about to open in London.
00:56Barrier to entry is the big one.
00:59We've done everything off our own back up until venue six.
01:04We'd invested our own money at day one, our first venue cost us £100,000 to open, our
01:11second venue cost us £250,000, now we're spending £2 million on venues, but we've
01:16done everything through our own investment, we haven't taken money, we didn't take any
01:21money off any institutional investors until venue six, where we brought in Biebering,
01:26a big London VC company who act purely in the hospitality and leisure space, so they
01:39were a great fit for us and that was the first bit of money that we took, which probably
01:43gave us the opportunity to be able to go into places like London and a bit more south.
01:49The barrier to entry is just so much higher than up north.
01:54We figured that building a brand up north, a lot of brands just start in London and when
02:00you start in London, it's almost impossible to go up north because you're so used to what
02:05you're used to in London, that operating further north of the London border just becomes a
02:14challenge, you get used to what you get used to, so then the only move is to go overseas,
02:21to go into more cities like London, capital cities etc. in European countries.
02:30You've done it the right way round, starting at the top, going north.
02:36It's full brand awareness right through the country.
02:38When we come to London, we know it will work in London, we absolutely know, then the world
02:42stage knows us and we've done everything through the country, through the UK, Scotland
02:48right down to London and then when London finds out, the world will know.
02:52We are massively involved currently in building our franchise model.
03:01It's a completely different thing to what we're used to, so you think, oh yeah, we'll
03:05just go, these are two amateurs going at quite an intense concept in franchising, thinking
03:14it's just so easy, it's not, it's restructuring your whole entire operation to adopt a franchise
03:21model.
03:22We're starting to do this very delicately without ruining any culture that we've already
03:26got in the company, but we're definitely on with it and then the second part of the franchise
03:34model is finding the right franchisee.
03:37It's not just something that we want to sell, we want to build the business in the right
03:42way with the right people.
03:44I'm John McGraw, I'm Artistic Director and Chief Exec at Factory International.
03:49I was really interested to be on a panel with people from very different sectors, so from
03:53retail and also for the more sport-based entertainment with a golf entertainment offer, so it was
04:02really nice to think about how does the work that we do in culture sit alongside those
04:08other elements of the experience of being in a city.
04:11Yeah, I think there's two different elements to that, so in terms of the physical space,
04:17I think we'll see more and more blended reality, we'll see different ways that digital and
04:23live and physical are interacting with each other, a lot of those technologies will become
04:28more accessible to people and so artists will be able to play around with them more.
04:33So I think with a space like ours at Aviva Studios where we have a very, very flexible
04:39and very large-scale space, we'll really be able to lead the way in some of those experiments.
04:44The more political side of the picture, I think we see a world in which opinions are
04:50being thrown around about everything very quickly and they circulate very quickly and
04:55people make up their minds probably too quickly about a lot of quite complex things and I
05:02guess the role of art and culture in there is at its best to get us all to take a moment
05:08to pause, to see things from different sides, to think about other people's perspectives
05:13and not just our own and I really hope that arts and culture organisations like ours,
05:19rather than responding to every emergency with a knee-jerk reaction and rather than
05:25always being put on the spot, take the space to help all of us think in a little bit more
05:30depth and a little bit more generously about what we all need, want and expect from each other.
05:36Yeah, so we have a hugely flexible space at Aviva Studios which is the venue that Factory
05:42International runs, it's a massive warehouse that can be used in lots of different ways
05:47and we have done shows on stages and all sorts of performances as well as music there but
05:54we want to do something quite different this Christmas so we work with a company from London,
05:58Lightroom, to put on an immersive video-based exhibition based around the work of the great
06:04Northern artist David Hockney and that means that we've got hundreds of people coming in
06:09every hour of the day and evening seeing that show and it's been a really lovely, very different
06:15offer for people at Christmas and New Year time, they can fit into their days in a different way.
06:20I'm James Flynn, partner at Beyond Corporate and I'm a construction lawyer by trade. I think it's
06:29a really good local event, local for Manchester and the North West which is very much our stomping
06:37ground and it's nice to be part of the conversation even if it's only from a sponsorship point of
06:43view. There's some really interesting speakers here today and a great crowd of guests as well so
06:50I think just being part of that conversation and trying to be involved in, you know, questions
06:55about where the future of our city might be heading, it's important for us. I thought Susie
07:02was very interesting from Urban Splash, she had some really interesting questions, a bit more
07:07sort of existential questions about, you know, where are we going from a planetary basis but
07:14obviously bringing it back to more sort of local development and what that's going to look like in
07:19the next say decade or 20 years. The panel after that, there was Joe from Urban Splash and Chris
07:26from Addison Young I think, both very informative as well, focusing on the office market and they
07:32were giving us really good insights into some deals that are happening in the city that have
07:38happened and that are going to happen in the office markets. I think both excellent informative
07:43speakers. Well, it's an interesting question because I don't think, you know, we haven't got
07:50a crystal ball and we don't know the answer to that with any degree of absolute certainty but
07:56I think we'll be looking at trying to see transactional work pick up a little bit.
08:02By that I mean development work particularly in the region. It's been difficult for developers
08:08for the last two to three years to make schemes work. We're focused a lot on build to rent,
08:14care and hotel sectors and it's been a tricky time so we'll be looking for that to pick up.
08:21From what we are hearing from the panel today, the office market will be an interesting space
08:25as well. Demand seems to be picking up there so that'll be an interesting one to watch.