BLASPHEMY FEST14

Business plan
Setting up a gig

I have been asked to make a business plan to put up a gig.

here I am to explain the process on how to do it, with very detailed information about the entire process.


The first thing that needs to be done is to find a venue,in this case it will be an small venue,with capacity of max. 200 people, as The Live Music Act 2012 says that if i make an even with less than 200 people and the event is between 8 am and 11 pm i won't need a license.

The event is called " BLASPHEMY FEST14"  which is a black metal music event, where 2 support bands and a headliner will play at The Intrepid Fox , these bands are Dark sigh(UK),Seven gates(UK)and the headliner PERPETUA(UK) .they have all agreed to play together somewhere in London , date and venue yet to be confirmed.
The Intrepid Fox (@ Archway Tavern)is located in 1, Archway Close,London,N19 3TD. The nearest tube station is Archway tube station ( Northern Line ).By bus:

BUS ROUTES

BUSES  THAT GO TO ARCHWAY STATION:

4, 17, 41, 143, 390, C11, W5

ROUTES THAT PASS NEARBY :

43, 134, 210, 263, 271, N20, N41

Improvement works take place on weekends and bank holidays on the London Underground services, check before you travel by visiting the transport for London website at : https://www.tfl.gov.uk.

This is a Black Metal gig, this means that not everyone that is into metal necessarily will be interested on attending due to the bands or the extremism of the music genre, but then again the gig's capacity is up to 200 people, so the show will sell very quick. The Intrepid Fox is a rock/metal venue, and they often put up free gigs so that bands can play and can get people to know of them rather than having only closest friends to show up and support, as many gigs are free or low priced loads of people attend and purchase alcohol, buy merch etc. they make the money back from a free gig.

Sound/engineers work fro the venue, so there is not need to hire engineers for this gig, stage crew are often volunteers, that also work in for the venue and this guys are really good at what they do, and are very friendly. So far the costs for the gig are minimal, if not absent !  Off course , there are going to be some costs but we will discuss that shortly.

To book the gig I need to contact Andre Joyzi,employee of the intrepid fox/Breed 77 drummer. He is the person in charge of booking gigs at the venue, so he is the man i must speak to. After the date,time and venue are agreed, we need to move on into the next step: Logistics.I need to think what is going to be needed for the gig taking place at The Intrepid Fox, the venue owns a very tight variety of equipment, this includes a Drum kit ( basic set up ) but they don't have any amplifiers, or cabinets.
The lighting and venue's sound and lighting system is fairly good, is loud and smooth, but the amplifiers need to be brought into the venue. As I am going to bring two bands from outside London, one is from Austria , i need to think about how much it will cost for them to bring their equipment into London from Brighton and Newcastle, so just to thinking about this part of the project can go up to £1000 , as they need to hire a Van/Driver to bring the equipment to London and take it back, and as it is a free gig they won't make any money back.
So here is a change of plans,as they have to pay for a hotel and transport expenses we will charge £6for a ticket, £4 if bought online,so on in case we sell 200 tickets, on an approximately amount
 of £5 , that will give us £1000,divided into 3 bands , that will leave around £333  to each band.This excluding the profit made from merchandise sales. The rest of the equipment is either own by the bands or the venue.

The date  and time agreed was on the Friday 12th of July at 7 pm ( Doors ). This was the best date because it leaves me plenty of time to promote the gig and to get all the equipment and crew together for the event , also Seven Gates is going to start an UK tour ,their first date is in London,the next one is on their hometown, Brighton, so they want to take their equipment from there to the rest of the UK but they are not well known in London and they want to get promoted on the Greater city.
The project started on the 25th of May, and by the 2nd of June we had everything ready to start promoting the gig.
To sort out the problem arisen with the amplification, i remember some friend of mine ( Chloe Herington ) told me about this company where i can go and hire equipment for live performance.This company is called John Henry's, and this company has very good reviews on equipment and prices.For more information visit www.johnhenrys.com
So after i found what the bands needed, it was the same for all of them,what made things easier.One Marshall and one Orange guitar amplifiers,and One
They needed two guitar amplifiers and bass guitar amplifier. Every band owns their own cabinet so, now i need to send this plan list to The Intrepid Fox stage manager, so that he could have everything ready in advance for the gig. The hiring of the instruments comes up to a total of £400 for 3 days minimum  ( company policies ) , plus a £600 deposit, money that i don't have , neither my family, so i had to ask a very close friend to lend me the money, luckily he lend me 90% ( £900 ) and i used my savings to pay the rest, as i will get £600 back as soon as i return the equipment he didn't mind , but off course i have to pay the other £400 , money that the bands have agreed to pay at the end , so each band will have to pay £133 approx. for the equipment hire, which is not a problem for them, but they said they weren't sure if it's worth it to play for £200, so coming back to terms we agreed that they instead of getting £333 , they would get only £300 for the gig , that gives me £99 extra to pay for the equipment, luckily there is another gig taking place at the venue the next day, and speaking to Andre he said he and his project will pay £250 for the rest of the hiring time, which leaves me with £349 towards paying for the hiring of the equipment.In order to get this £51 back , i decided to make a raffle at the day of the gig, so people will enter the raffle which is an electric guitar signed by all band members of the headliner PERPETUA ( which  is also the band that i play for ) , it costs £1 to enter , the guitar cost£50 , but if i get everyone to get a ticket this equals £££ cash ! Also the transport of the equipment cost and extra £30.

Now the costs of the equipment are covered, after this let's think about the promotion.
The venue will allow us to promote gig from the inside, by using posters and leafleting in and out the venue every night , but as i said before not many people are into this kind of music,not even on a metal venue, but we are smart ! we decided to search for a targeted audience, and wait! i just remember, the infamous Brazilian demons Mystifier are playing on the 7th of June at the Dome in Tufnell park,London, they play pure black metal , what a  great place to start promoting the gig.
We used this online website to print the leaflets, called instaprint ( www.instantprint.co.uk ) which charged us £15 for 1000 leaflets, this money also came out of my pocket. I personally attended the Mystifier gig to give leaflets to people, nearly 400 were gone within minutes, people were very interested on a black metal gig,which means the BLASPHEMY FEST14 is very likely to be sold out soon .On social media we put up a Facebook page, and an event , we ( the bands ) invited everyone we knew to this groups so that people could stay updated about any changes and to make them aware of the raffle, and the times , date and methods of transport.

At the day of the gig, the venue was ready for the performance, some of the fox employees/volunteers are already at the venue, to sort out the gig the stage, to bring in the equipment from the van in , ready for the soundcheck, as people arrive, the box office is just one friend of us that is doing some experiance work , and the ticket system is complex, onky thing needed to collect a ticket is an ID , and for those who bought it online, it has a unique number, so they cancel it out on a sheet that holds all the information about them.
it is a 18+ gig,so the security hired by the venue, will do the security checks ( ID,bags etc. )
the engineers will set up the sound and lighting,and the crew will set up the stage, they work for the venue too, so i don't have to worry about them, i just need to help bringing the equipment in, also make sure that they get a beer or a drink after the gig as a thank you, so that next time i decide to set up a gig like this in here they will be more than happy to help.

The gig was nearly sold out within two weeks, and at the day of the performance, it was sold out, also did the tickets for the raffle,the attendance was perfect, every band raised about £400 ,this includes the merchandise sales.

the expenses were over £500 including, equipment hire, promotion, and casual expenses for before,during,and after the performance ( transport, beer,water,food in general ) leaving us a profit of over £300 per band.


Until the next time!

Thank you.





SOURCES
www.tfl.gov.uk
www.gov.uk/entertaintment-licensing
www.johnhenrys.com
www.instaprint.co.uk