Stomp This! A Business Model with Style

January 2, 2009 by Mark T. Rafter

I went to see Stomp! with my family in Sacramento a couple of nights ago. One of those ‘we are not having enough fun in our lives’ moments where we went online and got 5th row seat 6 hours before show time.

Fantastic show (if you dont know what Stomp! is, here is a link to the official Stomp! website)

What I found to be even more interesting is the business model of a show like this. It’s the same as others like it (e.g., Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil) but it was the first time I really thought about it.

Sort of like a franchise except without all the FTC BS. It’s pretty simple and I suspect amazingly profitable:

Come up with an idea for a performance, make it happen, perfect it, do it many many times until it is viral or popular enough to expand, replicate.

Once the guys who started Stomp did the above and had a core group that performed and constantly sold out shows, they trained another cast so 2 performances could be ongoing at the same time. And then another, and another. Dont want to do too many or the market gets saturated. Pretty soon, they have trained the trainers and they just do whatever part of this business they want to.

Like branch out into the creation of a DVD. Or an IMAX special film. Etc. They get royalties from everything since it was their intellectual capital that started it all. All passive income sources. Scalable, expandable, etc.

Very entrepreneurial. Very nice.