Singapore too conservative to have unbridled horseplay?

Poor turnout closes Singapore Crazy Horse

Channelnewsasia: 25 January 2007 1851 hrs

SINGAPORE : Little more than a year after making its Asian debut in Singapore, the famous Crazy Horse Paris cabaret will close its doors this month because of poor audience turnout.

"This is a business decision. The attendance is lower than expected, that's why we have decided to close it," Goh Min Yen of entertainment firm Eng Wah Organisation, which brought the show here, said Thursday.

Goh said the decision was made after months of consultations with Crazy Horse Paris when the Singapore show failed to achieve its target of filling 65 percent of the 400-seat theatre.

She declined to give specific figures but said the theatre was less than half filled on most nights.

The Singapore show, like the original in Paris, features a scantily-clad, all-female troupe.

The poor turnout was partially due to Singapore's tight guidelines on where the show could be advertised, said Goh.

She added the show may have succeeded had it been introduced to Singapore later, since the city-state's two integrated resorts (IRs), which will include casinos, are expected to be fully operational by 2010.

"I guess we need a bit more like the new developments like the IRs," said Goh. "On hindsight, maybe I think that would be a better time to bring in Crazy Horse."

The company invested S$7m (US$4.57m) to bring the show here and has lost $3.8m, she said. Crazy Horse Paris opened in the city-state in December 2005.

Singapore, a tiny island nation lacking natural wonders, is striving to boost its appeal to tourists by building man-made attractions to augment its reputation for efficiency, cleanliness and safety.

The city-state lifted a 40-year ban on casinos in 2005 and issued gaming licences last year to two foreign companies, Las Vegas Sands and Malaysia's Genting International.

The two firms have promised to invest a total of over 10 billion dollars to build the integrated resorts, which will also include entertainment and convention facilities.

Singapore's long-term target is to attract 17 million visitors generating, who could generate $30b in revenues by 2015. - AFP /dt

My comments:

Hi friends,

I have great admiration for risk-takers and entrepreneurs.

Hence it is with a tinge of sadness that I hear of the premature demise of the Crazy Horse.

From a cursory straw poll in the doctors’ tea-room, none of my colleagues had gone to watch it. Even if they had, they would not have openly admitted to patronizing it, perhaps for fear of spousal complications.And I am not even talking of "porn"!

Crazy Horse’s target consumers are definitely not people like “us”- “Us” being the conservative and mostly professional-types.

The target groups are the millions of tourists that pass through our shores annually. Also ...not just any tourists but the high-end sort.

The average tourist stays for ?2 or 3 days? It would have taken smart marketing to tempt our tourists to commit big bucks and precious time to the show instead of going to the “almost mandatory” visits of Sentosa; the Night Safari, and of course shopping at Orchard Road!

Eng Wah’s marketing strategy was hampered right from the start. As there was nudity, Crazy Horse was classified as “adult” entertainment and hence the show could not be publicized properly in the mass media.

This was like going into battle with hands tied behind the back! Defeat was inevitable.

Shareholders (of which I am not) would be interested to know if the management had known how prudish Singapore’s government agencies were about advertising or did the strict criteria for advertisements land like a ton of bricks on the management’s heads after Crazy Horse's contract was secured?

It seems more like the latter as Ms Goh said, “. “For the first eight months, we could advertise only in the newspapers’ movie listings. No images. No pictorials. Even famous brands like Prada or Louis Vuitton have to continuously advertise. Also, on hindsight, I guess we came in a bit too early. Crazy Horse is a premium product that needs time to nurture.”

It is now water under the bridge for Eng Wah. I hope that the lessons learnt will spur them to succeed in the future.

"Today" newspaper reported, “After the topless revue arrived at Clarke Quay, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew saw it as a centrepiece to help Singapore shed its squeaky clean image and become “the Paris of South-east Asia”.

I guess we can safely say that unless we morph away from the top-down micro-management style that our rulers ( and the ruled) are so used to, Singapore cannot expect to be Paris or New York. Singapore will only ever remain Singapore.

Loosen up lah!

Cheers

Dr.Huang Shoou Chyuan