2 September 2008
column
Last Saturday the improbably named "Royal Ascot Goat Races", now an annual event, were held in Munyonyo.
Now the goat races, ridiculous as they might be, are the shrewd business person's big event. Small wonder that they have thrived most once tycoon Sudhir Ruparelia, a man who understands a thing or two about making money, took them to Munyonyo.
Sudhir doesn't understand goats. However, as they say, during the American gold rush, there were two types of people. Those who rushed to mine gold (the goat race), and those who rushed in to mine the miners (the goat race spectators). In the end, the ones who really made money and are still in business today are not those who went in to mine the gold (Levis jeans and so forth).
Many shrewd businesspeople understand that many people will pay top dollar to nurse their vanity.
It's something someone like Sudhir has practiced. He built the Kabira Club as an exclusive ostentatiously kitted outfit (and the cream of Kampala flocked there), and brought horses to Munyonyo. Yes, there is novelty in a horse in a country like Uganda, but most middle class parents get their kids to ride horses out of vanity.
The goat races are as vain an event as one can find in Kampala.
That is nowhere more apparent than in the name "Royal Ascot Goat Races". It conjures up the prestigious Royal Ascot horse race in the UK, complete with its outrageous sense of style and chic excess--just that there is no equal royalty or nobility in Uganda. What the race offers is the illusion of true class.
That established, the next thing was to sell to the fellows who have serious money - the big companies. So it is that virtually all the blue chip companies in Kampala take up a corporate tent, because if they don't they will not "look" posh.
That was a master stroke, because once the companies paid for the tents, they had to fill them. The only way they could do that was to invite guests, prestigious men and women who would complement the idea of poshness they are trying to be associated it.
In this way, Sudhir turned the smoke and mirrors of class into the tangible and profitable commodity of an assembly of Kampala's presumptive A-list.
But he would not achieve that if the goat race were football or athletics, because then he would have had to submit to the approval of the Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) or Uganda Amateur Athletics Federation.
In which case, he would have senior FUFA officials, even if all of them are not A-listers, sitting in tents --- and lowering standards. That would mean that the tents would be devalued, and MTN would, to use a hypothetical example, not be willing to pay Shs25m for a tent, and only offer Shs5m. But, most importantly, FUFA would insist on a cut of the revenues, and reduce Munyonyo Resort's profits further.
So the absence of a meddling regulatory bureaucracy allows Munyonyo to set its own rules, leverage the event to the limit, and laugh all the way to the bank.
I suspect that if tomorrow the government formed a Goat Sports Control Commission, Sudhir would abandon it and go into dog racing. And if the Uganda Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals intervened, if I were him, I would go into a rat race.
I am sure before long; there will be a newly formed Pest Control Board on my back, saying the rat race risked spreading the plague. Then I would go into the ultimate one, a donkey race. I would name it the "The Royal Ascot Ass Race."
Too often though, not many of us (definitely not your columnist) have such a fine understanding of human nature and how to use it to make a profit.
Take a business like forex bureaus. Very few open at night, or seven days.
The chaps who run the bureau at the entrance of Kampala Casino understand the advantage of opening late best. Because it's in the night that people are likely to be drunk, and thus exchange more money than they had planned to (perhaps there is a prostitute to pay or beer to buy for the boys).
Also, those who exchange money at night are likely to be more desperate than the chaps who trade in their currency during the day and have 20 bureaus to choose from. Therefore, the advantage is far more in favour of the buyer, than seller, during the night. Yet, over 99% of forex bureaus in Uganda open only six days a week and close at 5pm.
A good friend never tires telling me the story of the sausage. People, he says, will always buy the sizzle over the sausage.
If there are two sausage stands, and one of them has the sausage singing as it's fried, and the other one is silent (even though its sausage is better), most of us will buy from the guy whose sausage sings in the frying pan.
The Royal Ascot Goat Race is the ultimate sizzle.
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