Max Watt’s
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Max Watt’s

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“With the Australian dollar, summer festivals over in the Northern Hemisphere and so many festivals going broke, many promoters aren’t taking the risks of bringing bands overseas,” she says. “Some poorly aligned stars there caused a lot of problems for the industry in general, but October and November are looking exceptionally strong. Comedy Festival is a go, and we’re moving forward.” 

The increased reluctance to bring international bands to Australia is something Hamblin is fighting to reverse. It’s an issue that’s affecting not just her as a business owner, but her local competitors as well. So, instead of making enemies, she’s taking a smarter approach to boost the strength of the three Max Watt’s venues (Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane).

“The music industry hasn’t got a lot of margin in it – we want to work together,” she says. “Something that pleases me about working with The Venue Collective – you could say that other business in the area are working as direct competitors, but we had messages from them welcoming us to come in with the Collective. Our attitude isn’t to compete with existing market share, our attitude is to make the pie bigger – anything we can do to encourage promoters to take that risk and bring bands out. We want to work together. That’s my saying, ‘Let’s increase the pie’. We’re not going to fight over pieces of pie, let’s increase it.”

While Hamblin understands what needs to be done to expand the market, she also realises that captivating audiences is an equally strong tool. Performers have already brought the venue high regard due to fun stage shows, sound quality and lighting, and she’s hellbent on continuing the tradition.

“We’ve retained all the critical staff – the venue staff,” she says. “It’s very smooth in the point of view of promoter and performer. We’ve also put a lot of effort into the sound and lighting in all three venues, particularly in Melbourne. There’s improvements in look, performance and safety. We’ve put a capacity on it to make the punter’s experience a bit better as well – the punter’s experience obviously drives the performer’s experience to a major degree. We’re looking to our two customers, punters and performer. People are already coming in and complimenting the lighting and the sound.”

Evidently, Hamblin has acknowledged that creating a great venue experience is critical to the success of Max Watt’s, and is ambitiously trying to create that from the back end as well. “We’ve done things like put in dry bars with handbag hangers, we’ve put in a cool room upstairs so the staff don’t have to run up and down stairs with heavy kegs. There’s a lot that we’ve done to improve the employee’s experience. You’ve got to have happy employees, and you’ve got to have happy customers. We’ve got those two types of customers, and we’re willing to work to make sure the experience we’re giving is as good as we can do. And we’re willing to learn, we don’t think we have all the answers. I think that’s a fresh approach too.

“I do a lot of housing stuff, so I’m fairly attuned to the fix-up of the buildings themselves – including with the design and everything. I say to staff all the time, ‘What’s your experience?’ We have a feedback report that asks questions like, ‘What can we do better? What about if we try this?’ to our staff. We don’t want to limit the music either. It’s a room for hire, and we’re looking for anyone that it suits to use any of the venues.”

Chief Executive of Max Watt’s, Greg Bourke, is the man responsible for launching the three refurbished venues back in April. Disregarding whispers of the death of live music, Bourke came out brandishing a new business strategy like a torch in the financial darkness of the Australian music industry. The underlying approach is somewhat surprising – instead of trying to fill the venue out for maximum revenue, they’re lowering the capacity.

“You’ve got to get to the bar and get to the loo,” says Hamblin. “It’s got to be a good experience in that sense, and that’s something that The Venue Collective advised as well. Another way to look at that strategy would be to just stack them in. The better strategy we’re using is to give people a better experience so they’ll come back a second night. That’s worked for us a few times over so far and that’s good. The Venue Collective’s Richard Moffat – there’s nobody who knows the music industry like Richard Moffat in Australia – with the bookings and everything, and he’s been a big help.Industry’s had a bad couple of months and coming out of that, we’re seeing a lot of improvement.”

BY THOMAS BRAND

Photo By Ian Laidlaw