Live Company Group PLC (LON:LVCG) Chairman David Ciclitira caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the launch of BRICKLIVE Kids’ Café in Seoul, Korea
Q1: David, you’re launching the first BRICKLIVE Kids’ Café, can you explain for us a bit about the concept and what it will contain?
A1: It’s actually not the first BRICKLIVE Kids’ Café, it’ll be the first to actually be launched but earlier this year we announced a contract to extend the brand of BRICKLIVE Kids Cafés in China. Where we will be basically launching up to 100 cafés in the next 5 years. This is a one-off BRICKLIVE Kids’ Café in the centre of Seoul and from this, we would look to launch further BRICKLIVE Kids Cafes in Korea, probably in 2019.
Q2: Can you tell us a bit more about the relationship BRICKLIVE have with Hino?
A2: The key to this project, this individual project, is the location. The Dongdaemun Design Plaza, DDP, which was designed by Zaha Hadid which is one of the most famous architects who died recently, is a fantastic place, it’s owned by the city of Seoul and the city of Seoul had granted Hino the right to launch restaurants at this location.
She’s already launched a restaurant there and she was intrigued by BRICKLIVE the brand and came to us and said she wanted to launch a BRICKLIVE Kids’ Café. We agreed to that and obviously, it will actually launch physically, I think, in 2 weeks times. It’s a fantastic location and the location which is in the centre of Seoul has traffic of several million per year, so I believe it will do very well.
Q3: What is it you find so exciting about this venue and this project?
A3: Well, as an individual I’ve done business in Seoul and Korea over the last 10 years, it was where we really launched our first international BRICKLIVE and it’s where we have centres in Seoul.
The Korean culture in Asia is very much the creative hub of Asia and I think what they do other people copy, whether movies, fashion so it’s only fitting that we’re going to launch first physical BRICKLIVE Kids’ Café there and I think it’ll work very well.
How that all works is of course we provide the licence, we provide the content, we don’t invest in the project, it’s a 5-year contract with a 5-year licence and assuming this is going to be a success, we will be looking to franchise out the concept of BRICKLIVE Kids’ Cafes in Korea in 2019.
Q4: What is the business model for this?
A4: The business model is very simple, it’s like everything we do at BRICKLIVE. BRICKLIVE seeks to find partners and the key, I think, is finding the right partners, we obviously have people like MCH, the people who run Art Basel in Basel, we have people at Multiplay in the UK.
In Korea we have a very successful local partner, and this is running on exactly the same principal, we licence out brand, so people pay us licencing fees on an annual basis and we also provide content from which they pay us as well.
Q5: What does the Kids’ Café mean for the brand BRICKLIVE?
A5: I think when we started, you must remember that BRICKLIVE, the actual brand, was physically launched in November 2016 at Birmingham at the NEC Show so that makes us 17 months on, we’ve obviously run and continue to run a significant number of exhibitions around the world, when I say run we don’t run them, they are run on our behalf by our partners.
We launched last year in Seoul BRICKLIVE centres, centres are basically redundant spaces which people experience the BRICKLIVE private experience. We have, again, publicly stated that we have now signed 2 BRICKLIVE centres in China, one in Beijing and one in Shanghai, the Beijing one will open in the middle next month.
The BRICKLIVE Kids’ Café which has already been announced and launched the concept in China is an extension of that brand, a further extension of that brand and I’m sure that there’ll be other extensions of the brand that will launch over the forthcoming months.
Q6: What can we expect from the café brand in the future?
A6: Well, as I said, this is a one-off contract which I think is important because, as I said, the whole of Asia is based around celebrities, the whole world these days based around celebrities, but particularly in Korea, people in China and people in Japan they used to look to the icons that come from Korea.
This particular café, I think, and its location will attract celebrities, their kids and it’ll be a very photographed success and what that’ll mean going forward, as I said earlier, is that we look to then tender out a franchise for BRICKLIVE Kids’ cafes throughout Korea. I should say that Korean’s drink a lot of coffee, there’s almost every coffee brand you can see out in Korea.
As I said, we‘ve already signed and announced a contract for the launch of up 100 BRICKLIVE Kids’ Cafes in China and we are actually in discussions with other parties, other territories to look at similar projects.
Live Company Group PLC operates as a live events and entertainment company. The Company offers sports marketing, media, and management services. Live Company Group also provides television and radio broadcasting services. Live Company Group serves customers worldwide.
