Gay Business Trends

Mention the words, "gay business" and the images that come to mind fall into 7 categories:

1.   Really gay businesses with a historical track record of  flaming gayness:

• hair salons and spas 
• flower shops
• gay bookshops and gift shops
• home decor shops 
• gay clothing retail 
• gay clothing manufacturers 
• gay gyms

 
2.   Gay Bars, Clubs, Cafes and Restaurants

3.   Gay Sexual Businesses: 

• saunas 
• gay sex shops with booths and glory holes 
• gay escort agencies
• gay porn production
• gay sex toy manufacturers 

  
4.   Gay Promotional Business: 

• mega-dance, circuit parties and rave organizers (with or without fashion show thrown in)
• DJ promotions
• Drag Queen shows
• Mr Gay This-or-That competitions
• Gay porn video award ceremonies
• Pay-for-entry gay sex parties - think HustlaBall
• Gay Financial Planners - yeah we put them here, because most are paid commission whores for the mutual fund and insurance companies whose "products" they "recommend".
  

  
5.   Gay Professional Services:

• gay law practices - usually small scale
• gay medical and dental practices - usually small scale
• gay accounting and bookeeping firms - usually small scale

 6.   Gay Lifestyle Businesses: 

• cruises
• resorts
• personalized itineraries
• naked yoga retreats
• high-end men only spas
• gay travel agencies 
• freebie fag rags and paid gay mags (held hostage by their advertisers and special interest PC groups...?)
• Gay TV stations (held hostage by their advertisers and special interest PC groups....?)
• Gay radio stations (held hostage by their advertisers and special interest PC groups....?)

7.   Gay Internet Businesses:

• chat rooms
• message boards
• regional and international gay portals acting as databases
• online interntional gay escort portals
• multi-player 3D gay animation virtual hookups 
• GPS hookups via smart phones and stupid fags **cough** Grindr **cough**

Exclusions

(We're ignoring for the moment, those activities that may run as a quasi-business non-profit model, for example, Gay Film Festivals that receive official funding and commercial sponsorship, or a gay hospice established via fundraising and/or a philanthropic Foundation).

 
The Lifestyle Loop

Notice that in the list of 7 it doesn't matter where one starts, it operates as a feedback loop. In other words, sooner or later a gay man will have gone up and down that list a few times million times in his life. If he's awake, he'll understand that's where "the lifestyle" and its associated baggage  benefits comes from and he'll choose judiciously, perhaps to avoid stereotyping himself. 

If he's up to his balls in it, he'll die a statistic.


The Pink Dollar

For over 25 years, it's been fashionable to talk about the power of the "Pink Dollar". This is the assumed purchasing power of the affluent gay man, who, devoid of the usual hetero commitments,  is said to have the financial means to indulge in never-ending sessions of retail therapy globally. 

Recently, we came across the figure of US850 Billion as the projected purchasing power of the LGBT "community". We were baffled by this figure because like so many other things in Faggotry, one is not supposed to enquire too closely. We haven't seen any breakdown of figures amongst the L, G, B and T categories. Everything is just lumped together.

For starters, we're not aware of high net worth Transvestites or Transgenders. The former are usually closeted non-passable types polluting Craigslist, or performing drag queens.  The latter are usually living off porn and prostitution, usually on hormone therapy or saving for their next surgical procedure. Some Transgenders hold down a middle class full time job via mainstream employment.

As for Bisexuals, unless they 'fess up as Bi, we don't think it's possible to obtain any accurate information how their income is split between hetero and homo expenses. Many are on the down low anyway.

For gay men, again we're clueless although we have some suspicions. We think that the overall purchasing power of gay men in the West has fallen and for many will continue to fall, but is rising in Asia. We would dearly love to see regional and country breakdowns. We refer the reader to the series, Cash Flow For Fags 1 and 2 for our take on typical expenses for the generic fag and the high-end fag


Gay Marriage & Gay Business Trends

However, one development in the West may affect Gay Business Trends. That's the intersection of Gay Marriage and Gay Business.  In God's Own Country, the Defence of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman, was (predictably) struck down by the Supreme Court.  One of the reasons given was that it discriminated financially between heteros and homos.  This dovetailed into our contention that the Gay Marriage issue was not about Luuuv and Equality, but rather about the legacy status of Same Sex Benefits during and after employment.

For the purpose of Gay Business trends, the ruling allows married gay couples to pool their resources and thus present themselves as "qualified investors" or "accredited investors" for the purposes of investing via Private Equity.

Private Equity is the buying of shares in privately held companies such as startups or mid-sized businesses with potential or a track record. They are not quoted on the stock exchange, although the venture capitalists who invest in them, frequently with management control, may seek to take them public via an Initial Public Offering.  Alternatively, as the company becomes successful, they may sell their shares to another private investor, sell the entire company or take a cut of the revenue stream in order to recover their investment and make a profit.

It's not hard to see that if some gay couples in the West qualify as private equity investors and gay individuals in Asia have higher disposable income, then an 8th gay business classification is taking shape:

8.   Gay Private Equity Investment


Gay Private Equity Investment is Already Happening

“Investing in quality companies that recognise the business case for LGBT diversity is both sound investment management and a force to effect change for good”

--------Williams Institute Research

Take a look at the website of LGBT Capital. Based in London and Hong Kong. It describes itself as a specialist asset management and corporate advisory business dedicated to furthering LGBT freedoms globally.

Here's some more (underlining by FuelMix):

As LGBT market segments develop further, significant opportunities for well conceived and sensibly capitalised LGBT targeting consumer businesses are emerging, not least in developing markets.........LGBT Capital deploys its experience and an international perspective to offer advice and execution to support:

- Capital Raising for start-up and existing businesses, including for organic growth;
- Potential merger and acquisition (M&A) for inorganic growth;
- International and cross-border expansion;
- Greater China Business Entry, including the sourcing of local partners.

LGBT Capital provides advice and execution to mainstream businesses looking to target the LGBT consumer sector........

Check out this Mergers and Acquisition example. Underlining by FuelMix:

GROUP NEWS: LGBT Capital completes groundbreaking M&A transaction, demonstrating LGBT gaining increasing recognition as a mainstream growth market. Fridae.com and Stark Mobile Technologies sign deal to create leading mobile and app platform for the preeminent Asian LGBT site. As part of the deal brokered by LGBT Capital, Stark becomes a major shareholder in Fridae and will provide full technology and infrastructure support.


Not only has this company launched 2 investment funds, but its also launched a Wealth Management Fund aimed at the LGBT crowd in Asia. This fits in with our assertions in Fag Future 2011 - 2020 about the growing wealth of the Asian fag (together with our warning that some Asian fags will, as a result of hubris and arrogance, go broke spectacularly).



A Word of Caution

It's all fine and dandy to crow about the potential of LGBT businesses and we wish them well.  However, from our experience in observing gay businesses, an important element that doesn't show up in the Business Plan, the Statement of Cash Flows, the Income and Expense Statement or the Balance Sheet, is the quality of Emotional Intelligence of the gay business owner.

It's really a behavioural mechanism.  As Anthony Robbins says, there's a difference between what a person can do and what a person will do.  We've been flabbergasted at the crippling lack of Emotional Intelligence and pervasive criminality in some (not all) of the gay businesses we've examined.  It simply turned us right off having anything to do with them. We're not sure whether it was a Western cultural thing, or a global sub-cultural trait.

Ever seen a fag in an Armani suit and a briefcase throw a hissy fit when his balls have been pinned to the wall by a direct line of questioning by potential investors.....??  It's amazing how quickly he'll ejaculate that he's being "violated".  If institutional private equity is now looking in his direction, we'd like to think that perhaps the fag will Man Up a little.

Time will tell.

In the mean time, we'll remind ourselves of our favourite verse and chorus of Kenny Roger's classic hit, The Gambler:

.......He said, "Son, I've made my life out of readin' people's faces,
And knowin' what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
So if you don't mind my sayin', I can see you're out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I'll give you some advice."..................

Chorus:

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.



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