KEY POINTS:
PARIS - Topless dancers, magicians and transvestites all add up to one thing for Jean-Philippe Cartier - a sound investment.
Cartier is part of a group backing the Bobin'o cabaret, which opened last month in Paris' Montparnasse.
It's the first new cabaret in the French capital since the
1970s, and Bobin'o dancers will take the show to Dubai and Moscow next year.
Family-controlled cabarets such as the Lido and Moulin Rouge fell on hard times as patrons rejected old-fashioned theatrics and substandard food.
Now private equity investors are buying clubs, smartening up interiors and sending their high-kicking, bare-breasted dancers overseas as the latest French export.
"Opening a club is clearly risky, but if it works, it's very profitable," said Cartier, 31, a Paris parking lot operator whose group has spent €12 million ($22.2 million) on the club.
Patrons at Bobin'o are treated to a gaudy mixture of high and low art, with dancing waiters, bejeweled showgirls and a camp version of Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty featuring a fat female impersonator and a blond stripper sharing the title role.
The showgirl cabaret, a hallmark of Parisian nightlife since the late 19th century, slumped in the 1990s because the heirs of the founding families didn't have the expertise to manage the clubs, said Jean-Jacques Clerico, chief executive officer of the Moulin Rouge, which opened in 1889.
"At a certain point you need to turn to outside people," said Clerico. "For the strategy, marketing and finance you need people who really know what they are doing."
Philippe Lhomme's Luxembourg private equity group Baycross Europe in June 2005 bought Crazy Horse from the heirs of Alain Bernardin, who opened the saloon in 1951.
Sodexho Alliance, the world's No 2 caterer, last year bought a 55 per cent stake in the Lido from a branch of the Clerico family for €13.8 million. The company plans to turn the club's feather-wielding Bluebell girls into a worldwide brand.
Lhomme of the Crazy Horse - whose slogan is "the art of the nude" - says better marketing of his line of bottoms will improve his bottom line.
The Crazy Horse show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is successful and may be introduced in Tokyo, he said.
The Lido, on the Champs-Elysees, lost about €6 million in the year to August, said CEO Jean-Paul Fontan.
But with a marketing push and a menu created by Michelin chef Alain Ducasse's firm, the 1150-seat club may break even next year.
"Our first priority is to restore the Lido as a reference among Paris cabarets," Fontan said.
The Moulin Rouge, in Paris' Pigalle district and still controlled by the Clerico family, lost money between 1993 and 1997. Thanks in part to publicity from the 2001 movie of the same name, the club now fills most of its 850 seats for its nightly extravaganzas and made a €5 million profit last year.
The new owners of the cabarets are also attracting bigger headline acts. The 300-seat Crazy Horse last year brought in American Dita Von Teese, who describes herself as a "burlesque performer", and French singer and actress Arielle Dombasle performed there in February.
For Gerard Louvin, a music producer in the Bobin'o investment group, cabaret's appeal is easy to explain.
"It's a chance to spend a good evening with the most beautiful girls, the best-looking boys and the most surprising transvestites," he said.
"Even if you were in a terrible mood and didn't want to come, but your wife forced you, I want you to leave saying you had a great time."
- BLOOMBERG
