CLUB CLASS

The driving force behind London's Boujis, MATT HERMER was recently in Hong Kong to help organise a three-night pop-up club at The Space. He found time in his frantic schedule to grab a latte and chat to JON WALL

BELOVED BY A_LISTERS as well as young royals, Boujis burst onto the London scene eight years ago and – unlike other establishments that blazed briefly then disappeared without trace – its halo shows no signs of dimming. Indeed, the Chelsea private members club is now the cornerstone of the Ignite Group, a portfolio of bars, restaurants and clubs that’s set for further expansion on the international stage after opening a cocktail lounge in the sensational W Barcelona.

The brainchild of former investment banker Matt Hermer, named among the British capital’s 1,000 most influential people, Boujis made an appearance in Hong Kong last month in the guise of a charity pop-up club at The Space in aid of the Quintessentially Foundation. And it came as little surprise when the genial Hermer, who was in town for the duration, revealed among other things that Hong Kong features high on his company’s plans to rule the world after dark.

You jumped into the bar business pretty much at the deep end. What prompted you to take the leap?
What would now be known as insanity. I was a banker for eight years and part of what I did was entertain, as we used to in those days – it used to be long, fairly respectably boozy lunches with clients. After a big lunch I was never a guy who could go out and drink lots of beer, I just wasn’t made that way, and I used to go to this little cocktail bar [in Walton Street, Chelsea]…And one night I said to one of the guys, “Oh yeah, I’d buy a bar like this if it was for sale,” and he said, “Well actually, it is.” And it ended up being our flagship bar [Eclipse], somewhat amazingly. I look back and just cringe at the stupidity of my business acumen at the time. But there we are.

It must have been a near-vertical learning curve. Were you surprised at how quickly you made a success of it?
In this business, you either succeed fairly quickly – and then it’s about longevity – or you fail very quickly. We weren’t far from failing very quickly at the beginning. I think people presume that starting a business is easy in whatever way, shape or form, especially when you’ve been buffered in banks – you don’t have any idea about the real world as a young banker, a 28-year-old kid who thinks you know the world but you know absolutely nothing. And it was much tougher than we anticipated.

Were there times when you thought, “My God, is this going to work?”
Yah, yah. Every month there were trading figures that we obviously had to send out, and my brother, who was an investor and a big-shot banker in New York, said to me, “I don’t understand, just grab people off the street and get ’em in.” It was pretty hairy and there was a lot of family pressure to not fail.

What was the point when you realised it had succeeded?
Well, it was getting busier and busier, but busy doesn’t necessarily mean you make any money out of it. So I guess when we started making money, we thought, “Actually, there could be something in this.” After six months I was still working in the City, but I began to think that there could well be legs to more of these bars and it might be interesting to stay in this field, so I spoke to my dad…and he said, “You’re an idiot!”

So what are the ingredients for a successful bar, or nightclub, or restaurant?
Location is key, pretty much. Actually, everyone says “location, location, location,” – yes, of course – but unless you have a decent-enough product it doesn’t make any difference. Because whether you’re at the top of the Mandarin or in Wanchai, people are going to travel so long as they have a good time when they’re there. You’ve got to know what you want to do and where you want to position yourself, and you’ve just got to go and do it, and do it to the best of your abilities. So for me it’s about understanding the customer, it’s about the product and it’s about service, especially in today’s market.

What gives Boujis such extraordinary staying power in a business that, by definition, is ephemeral and fickle?
We’re coming into our eighth year [this month], and there aren’t that many nightclubs internationally that stay the distance and build on growth year-on-year – it’s a fabulous success story. It’s about making sure the customer gets looked after; it’s a home from home and we don’t pimp ourselves commercially. We’ve got incredible key staff who are very loyal and have been there since the beginning. We try to give back – our prices aren’t stupid compared with some others – and we’ve got a great events section that does things all over the world.

How easily can you transfer a club or a restaurant concept from one city to another? By which I suppose I’m asking whether a Boujis would work in a place like Hong Kong.
After a lot of research and field trips, we came up with a list of three countries and Hong Kong is at the top. So I’ve been here a lot, done a lot of work on demographics, areas, people, partners and…I wouldn’t say it would be easy to come out here – it’s never easy and any concept that I open, even in London, I’m shitting myself for a couple of weeks and wandering around going, “Is this going to work?” but you get a bit more confidence as time goes on and it does work. I think there are a lot of the essential ingredients [here] for success: a big expat community, a lot of our members come here, a lot of our members are from here, and it’s the same socio-economic group as the people we’d target…

And a local partner would be essential...
Without a doubt. Too many people have done things arrogantly before, thinking they can take on a foreign market, and I would never consider doing anything like that. You need to know people, you need to understand infrastructure and licensing, how the crowds work and where they won’t go to. A perfect example: we were offered something a while ago in Kowloon, a sensational property that on paper would probably have been an eight- or a nine-out-of-10 banker, but when we said to people, “Would you go to Kowloon?” No. “Might you go to Kowloon?” Maybe, in time. To me, that doesn’t make any sense, because it’s 15 minutes up the road, but if I asked somebody here, they’d say absolutely not. So could I have fallen down at the first hurdle by going for the sensational site? Yes. With a local partner to hold your hand, [there’s] nothing to worry about.

So is the pop-up club with the Quintessentially Foundation a kind of toe in the water for you here?
The short answer to that: yes. Like all of these things you need to adapt to the local market and having a partner like Quintessentially ticks so many boxes for us and makes things so much easier. And it’ll allow us to really get to understand the market, so in short, absolutely it’s a toe in the water for us. We’ve done quite a few of these pop-ups now – the last one was in Ibiza, we’ve done a party there for the past six years,  and we’ve also done Cannes for the film festival, Royal Ascot and Verbier – but we haven’t done one so far away.

So, apart from Hong Kong, where would you like Matt Hermer to be five years from now?
I think we’ve done pretty well now in the UK, we’ve got some pretty decent growth prospects, but the key to success in my business is going to be international growth. So we need to get a few things open internationally, and we’ve got a few things we’re going to be able to announce fairly shortly. I’d also like to have some kids, have good friends and family, and have a nice fulfilled life, I suppose. I know it sounds very corny and American and idealistic, but it’s the friends in this world that make you what you are and I’ve been blessed with some great friends. So continue on the same path, meet new people and learn more, because if I’m doing the same thing but I’m not learning, I’m bored, and if I’m bored that’s a disaster for everybody!