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.
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