M02.10 BellyDancing Niche Disaster

Bellydancers are a tight knit community in Japan, and one day BodyChance consciously decided to offer our services to them. Being tight knit, word could spread quickly, so we did not have to spend money to create buzz. Brant has asked me to write about how we did this, so here it is… It was a project that ended with a flourish: 200+ belly dancers packed into a theatre venue - that BodyChance had hired for the night - to watch performers gyrating to a rhythm, while I tried to figure out what the heck was my job here… Honestly? I made a complete mess of it. It cost us a fortune and we hardly made a dime. Even today, very few bellydancers come to study at BodyChance. Now that we have shifted focus to classical musicians, all that's left for me is the ability to wiggle my hips and legs quite well (but I could already pole dance, so that doesn't count for much either). So how did we start it? Not with a blog. I hear the sighs of relief echoing around the world: that's right folks, it's possible to launch a niche by just swinging your tongue in the right places, to the right people with the right idea. Get those three right, and you're away. Our niche project got started because one of our staff knew a leading teacher in the Bellydance world of Tokyo. We met with her and discussed doing an "event" at the end of the year. She in turn introduced me to the Editor of the local Bellydance magazine – they met with me and started running articles on our events, and soon we were away… We visited classes, held classes, and eventually ran a 3 hour workshop that was attended by close to 40 bellydancers. There was a keen interest, and it started to feel we were on a roll. But then, two things interrupted our flow. Although the magazine was supportive of publishing our event calendar (in the section designed for that), for some reason we couldn't convince them to run an article on us. Without a blog, we needed that to keep the momentum going. The other interruption only slowly became apparent as we kept having events: we almost never converted people to our BC Basic monthly membership program. The best we could do was lure them to "events" including our end of year bash that cost close to $15,000. Insane – but there you are, that's what you have to be sometimes. When you are choosing a tight community like this, the up side is that news travels fast, and people hear about you quickly and easily. The down side – in this niche – is the girls spent all their money on bellydancing: classes, going to events, travelling even. Alexander Technique in the form of a monthly membership commitment: no matter how it was presented, it just couldn't compete. Using this method for launching your Self in a niche means you are good at talking, good at thinking up deals that benefit both parties, good at doing the Richard Branson thing, and making a splash in their community by your deeds and words. There are lots of ways to launch your Self into a niche…