Superheroes Inc - Owner Andre Pech - Interview with Boardoom Radio Australia - June 2011

I

don't really have any entertainment background as such. I was lead role of the Year 7 play, but I think it was just because I was tall, not because of any particular acting abilities, and that's really my only background there.

The

way I got into superheroes was through, I guess, just being in the right place at the right time. I was living in an apartment block and

happened

to meet someone who was doing a similar job,

and

I was studying at the time and trying to make ends meet, and he mentioned, you know, you should give this a go. It's a great way to make a bit of extra money.

And, you

know, doing that or pulling beers for a 12-hour shift, it just kind of made sense to give it a go, even though I was a bit hesitant, and I did, and

it

somehow found

out... You said you had

kids,

though.

Yeah, well, I didn't have an aversion to kids,

and

I actually found that through doing this, that I actually quite liked them.

Not

that I was always one of those people that would go and play with the kids and stuff like that, but I guess I just found a hidden talent.

What

we do is entertainment at corporate events, functions, birthday parties, christenings for children. It's aged between... We deal with children aged roughly 3 to 10 years old. We do that with characters, character-based entertainment. So pirates, superheroes, cowboys, fairies, princesses, you name it.

We

supply clowns, obviously. You can't have an entertainment company without clowns.

So

we supply characters who entertain at these functions.

There

are some amazing places that you go.

You

can be in some famous movie star's house,

and

you suddenly look around and go, hang on, I recognise these pictures.

I

recognise that person, or

at

least I think I do. And then

you

suddenly click, because you're obviously dealing with the children,

and

quite often in these modern times, it's the nanny that books you. We've done events for Russell Crowe,

and

we did

Joe

Hockey, Eddie Obeid, the Murdochs, and, I mean, they're just the names that you instantly recognise, and sometimes you go and go, hang on, that looks like a newsreader.

It's

like, oh, that is the newsreader,

or all

sorts, just random people you meet.

We

once did a party for some kid who, I'm sure he's playing Premier League now, and

had

pictures all over his wall of David Beckham.

And

then there was a picture of him with David Beckham, and I said, oh, fantastic, your son met David Beckham.

And

she said, yeah, he won a competition.

I

said, oh, great. Obviously, maybe he wrote in 25 words or less why I want to meet David Beckham. And then

we

went into their lounge room, and they were watching video of this kid playing soccer

with

David Beckham.

I

was like, oh. And he was

doing

stuff that you wouldn't think a nine-year-old

would

be able to do with a soccer ball, and I've since found out that he was,

you

know, the

world

champion under nine soccer player or something like that.

So, yeah,

you meet some interesting people.

We

go to some interesting places. It's really lovely. Now that

I

have kids, I

consider

my own children, and I really love it when I see it in other kids, when they really believe that you are

a

superhero or a pirate and they say, you know, you're a pirate. Where's your ship? And you say, oh, I just parked it down the road. And even though you're in the middle of,

I

don't know, Parramatta or something, you know, where there's, well, Parramatta has a river nearby, but you're in the middle of somewhere with no water. Like, wow, the ship's just nearby, and they really believe it, or you're a fairy, you've just flown in, or

something

like that, or you're a superhero, you've just

come

in from

God

knows where

and

flown in, and the kids are just so amazed to see you. And they really think that it's you, and they can't believe that you remembered their birthday party, and they're so into it. Other times, they're like, no, you're not it. Luckily, I can say, and I'm sure when I first started out that there were some that probably didn't believe, but hopefully, they're probably blocked out of my memory now.

But

now, even if you've got the older kids, and they're really cynical, you just have to work on them piece by piece. And you learn techniques about how to deal with children, like,

as

they get older, they do get more cynical. So rather than coming in and saying, hi, I'm a superhero, I've just been fighting bad guys, you come in and you, I guess, address them in a different way. So rather than giving them an opportunity to say, you're not a superhero, how come, if you're a superhero, why don't you fly, or do this, or do that?

And

so you just turn it back on them, and, you know, all right, everyone, I'm not going to do it right now. I wouldn't want to fly in the house and burst a hole in the ceiling, you know.

So

you just learn different ways of dealing with it,

and

I guess, hopefully, they buy it. Last year, we did around 1,550-odd

parties.

It works out to something like 30 a week. Logistically, it does become quite a challenge, dealing with not just getting from place to place, but also making sure that you have the right amount of streamers and balloons and stereos and wigs and costumes and so on and so on and so on. And also, given the nature of what we do, the type of people we work with, not just as far as clients, but also our employees, we have to make sure that they are suitably equipped to manage their own logistics, such as being ready to go from place to place and making sure that they manage themselves. We've got around 20 people on staff, which sounds a lot, but when you're dealing with

actors

and students, as we are, there's always someone doing exams or there's always someone away. So really, at any time, we're using

approximately

10 to 15.

As

far as managing it

behind

the scenes, it does become quite logistical, and ultimately, on the one hand, you obviously want to manage the front of house stuff and the sales and dealing with the clients and making sure they're happy, but quite a lot of the business now is just dealing with those logistics and making sure that when it comes to the weekend, when we do probably 90% of our work, that those logistics are ironed out because

once

the

Saturday

has started, as an example, when

all

the kids are having their parties, you really have to make sure that everything's done, otherwise there can be issues.

Word

of mouth is fantastic. You know, the mum connection. parents, they trust other parents, and

we've

been lucky enough,

I

guess, that we've

put

a lot of effort into how we've

not

just marketed ourselves in terms of dealing with parents, but also

the

level of care that we've put into our shows

so

that parents

will refer

us quite happily, and we now roughly do about 60% of our bookings come from word of mouth, which is pretty good. It's great from that perspective to have someone call you up and say, hi, I dealt with, or my friend, Mrs Johnson, recommended you. We say, great.

We

look them up. Oh, yep, you know, we remember that event that was recently. How did you find that? And they say, oh, it

was

fantastic. And

it's

a great,

it's

a great base to start from where people instantly trust you given that their friends have had you and they trust you.

As

far as our growth, and marketing goes,

we

do obviously have a, I hope, a good online presence.

The

mums will be the judge of that, I guess. And we're looking at building it up more so. We also advertise on a lot of parenting and

sort

of Sydney-based parenting publications,

which

seem to work quite well. and there's also a lot of

online

parenting websites and party and entertainment websites as well that we have a presence on also.

As

far as our future growth plans, at the moment, we, the last

nine

years, we've

pretty

much focused just on getting the entertainment down pat.

and

the reason behind that was always just to concentrate on what we do and making sure that that was done properly

because

if your core business

drops

off, then everything suffers. So we're at a position now where

we're

doing that well. Touch wood. Hopefully. Hopefully people will agree. And so we can leverage off that and introduce a retail range in terms of merchandise for the party equipment. and then maybe we've also launched stage shows and other kind of corporate events.

Okay. I

guess what I would say is

that

there's only one person that can make this happen. And I know it's a cliche to say it, but and that's you who's going to make this happen. So you need to match your interest and your ability and your passion

because

it's going to be you who is

doing

this maybe outside of work hours trying to make this one idea happen.

And

if those three things aren't matched and if those three things aren't there, then

no

one is going to make it work for you.

You

need to be able to

you

know, drive that drive that car

in

that direction that's going to make this idea work.

And

if you don't have those if you don't have the passion, the ability and the interest then it's not going to happen.

and they're Because parallel