What is Timbre's strategy in creating a sustainable audience for your acts? How do you attract new customers and retain old ones?
Our customers are mainly between 18-40, anyone who likes live music and hanging out with their friends. At Timbre @ The Substation, you would always see groups of friends coming together. We also make sure that the ladies felt comfortable and safe at any of our outlets, as Timbre has a more wholesome and safe image.
At the different outlets, Timbre’s basic DNA of holistic dining experience with entertainment can be expected, but each outlet has its own charm. Timbre @ The Substation would be more rock-n-roll, louder and edgy, with more original showcases featured, due to its location near Fort Canning which live concerts are held, which is part of this entire sub-culture image that The Substation projects.
Timbre @ The Arts House would be more acoustic, laid back by the river, and because most of the customers are from the Central Business District, the repertoire would have to be different, including classics songs from the 80s.
Timbre @ Gillman would have a more romantic dining kind of vibe and great for group celebrations like birthdays, and we also have a lot of families with kids heading there as well.
We also have Switch, which attracts a different group of customers, who are similar to the crowd at Timbre @ The Substation but they also enjoy listening to Mandarin or other Asian music. There are many who enjoy listening to Bruno Mars as much as Jay Chou, and this can be seen in their playlists.
When we first started, we had the help of many bands who brought their own fans to Timbre. We are thankful for that as Timbre @ The Substation wasn’t exactly the easiest location to find, and even today we have people calling us to ask how to get there.
At that time, it was also the start of the rise of social media such as blogs, Facebook and later on Twitter, which helped to spread awareness, especially amongst our younger customers. We’ve also had strong support from the media like The Straits Times, which published cover stories and articles about us.
Throughout the years, we realize that Timbre has become a place where people like to come to celebrate special occasions such as birthdays, marriage proposals and anniversaries. That’s where our bands play a very big part in interacting the customers and being part of the whole experience, and not just engaging or entertaining them through music. Inevitably, we become part of their lives, and that kind of branding takes effort, because we’re dealing with very personal events like wedding proposals, which we cannot afford to screw up. Every event is a customized experience, which sometimes I’ll personally handle, and all details are thoroughly looked into, right down to which song they sing on stage, whether they will do a dance after the proposal and so on. We listen to their requests and try our best help as much as we can.
We also invested in technology to improve our dedication system, which allows customers to make their dedication requests through SMS, which would be shown on screen.