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Fabric director discusses administration and the future
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 14 July 2010
Following London nightclub Fabric’s brief stint in administration recently after it became caught up in the financial difficulties of sister club Matter, company director Cameron Leslie has spoken to Resident Advisor about the situation, Fabric’s new owners and the future of the club under the Dome.
As previously reported, the popular London club and its spin off label and music publishing company went into administration at the end of May following the closure of Matter. Launched in 2008 as part of The O2 complex, Matter failed to take off despite a multi-million investment in it and a generally good reception from clubbers and DJs regarding the state-of-the-art venue. The club is currently closed for the summer, and its future uncertain. Rumours are circulating that the Matter company will be liquidated and the club shut for good.
Explaining how such a seemingly well-liked club as Matter came to fall into such financial difficulties as it did, Leslie told RA: “Matter opened in September of 2008, and there was almost a complete corporate collapse by that Christmas. Matter was meant to be multi-purpose venue, it wasn’t meant to be just a nightclub. There were other revenue streams that contributed to make that project work, and as such, if those revenue streams aren’t there … then the club element of the business has to over-perform”.
Transport problems have frequently been blamed for the club’s woes, and in particular engineering work being undertaken on the Jubilee underground line, and Leslie confirmed that had been a big issue: “60% of the weekends [Matter] was open, you couldn’t get there. When we opened in September of 2008, the Jubilee line was supposed to be finished in January of 2009; here we are in July of 2010, and they’re saying they’re not probably going to be done by the end of this year”.
As for how Fabric came to fall into administration, Leslie continued: “The inability to restructure our financing at Matter had an unfortunate and very consequential knock-on effect onto Fabric … The state of the banking sector in terms of trying to take the pressure off businesses is hard, especially when you’re in a sector such as nightclubs which banks perceive to be risky and unattractive. We had an uphill task for quite a long period of time”.
He added: “You have to realise, Fabric wasn’t a bad business. It’s not a business that was necessarily failing, it was a business forced into administration by the financial structure of a greater group of companies. It was no fault of Fabric that that happened to it. It was an unfortunate set of circumstances, but that doesn’t mean that Fabric was under-performing. Far from it; given the current climate, Fabric is doing well”.
As revealed by CMU last month, Fabric the nightclub and its spin-off record label were bought from parent company Fabric 591 by the newly incorporated Fabric Life in mid-June, making them a separate entity from the other related businesses (the Fabric publishing company was also sold to another buyer).
Leslie insists that the new owners are keen to allow the club to continue running as before, with the same team and ethos. He said: “There’s really not a lot to talk about with Fabric Life; to anybody on the front end, it’s the same Fabric. [The new investors are] a group of people that we’d had a relationship with. There were a number of people that wanted to take the name Fabric off the door and do something totally different … but this was a group that really wanted to preserve Fabric as it was, they weren’t looking to change it”.
So, with the future of Fabric assured, what about Matter? Leslie said that it was “probably too early to say” if the liquidation rumours were true, adding: “The reality is that we’ve shut the doors at Matter for the summer, we’re in discussions for what that means … we’re going to know a lot more shortly”.
Read the interview in full at www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=12485
