Eric
Langan, the Man with a Thousand Strippers
By Ben Barna
October 07, 2008
I once fell in love with a girl in Midtown. It wasn't the kind of natural love
I have for my mother, or the dopey love for an ex- girlfriend. It was the kind
of love I feel when I've consumed seven vodka sodas, and a beautiful blonde is
writhing in my lap wearing nothing but a thong, while Tricky's
"Christiansands" plays on the speakers. Then I get to talking with
her. She tells in a lovable South African accent how she used to date Jake
Gyllenhaal, and I wonder what time she gets off work.
Thirty minutes later,
she's in the lap of an elderly Asian man with a softheaded smile, and I
suddenly snap out of it -- oh right, I'm a customer. Such is a typical night at Rick's Cabaret & Steakhouse, a
rising gentleman's club in Manhattan looking to topple Scores as New York's premiere place to see URL-free naked women.
Rick's Cabaret has multiple locations across the country, and in charge of them all is a man
named Eric Langan, whose passion for collecting sports cards allowed him to
become king of his very own pole-dance palace. I spoke with the very content
CEO about the perks of taking his company public, how to treat celebrities, and
why you never try on a suit in the dark.
Let me ask you first, what's your origin in this business? I've been
to Rick's a couple times, I've had a great time there.
Well, when I was 19, I got married and divorced in the same year, so my friends
started taking me to a little local club in Forth Worth, Texas, and we started
hanging out there, playing pool and whatnot. And I started dating one of the
entertainers, so when I was 21, I decided to sell my baseball card collection
and open up my own club, and that's how I got started in the business.
So your baseball collection was that strong?
Oh yeah, it was worth a lot more than I sold it for, because I wanted the club
so bad.
And was this Rick's, or was this something else?
No, it was called Sheba's Lounge. I took over Rick's in 1999.
Where did you get the skillset to become a club owner?
Oh, I learned the hard way, I had no clue what I was doing when I opened my
first club. I was 21 years old, I had money on a daily basis as far as you
know—I had run my own sales business, but not really anything like this before.
So you know, I just jumped in. With cold beer and some naked girls, it's pretty
easy to make money.
And what about school?
I went to one semester of community college and basically started my own
business, so I never finished, and never went back to school.
So you opened up the first club, then what happened?
Then we opened a second club in Arlington, Texas, in 1991, and just kept
expanding from there. I opened another club in East Texas.
These were all just
one-off locations. Then in 1994, I built the XTC Cabaret in Houston. That's
where we're at currently.
Why do you call it a "cabaret"?
Well, I guess in Texas, that's just what many adult businesses are
called cabarets. Like in New York, you call them strip clubs; down here, if you
said strip clubs, people know what it is, but they would immediately associate
it with a very low-end club. All clubs are strips clubs in New York. In Texas,
it's an adult cabaret or a gentlemen's club - those are the keywords.
So when you took over Rick's, did you christen it a cabaret, or was
it already a cabaret?
No, no, Rick's Cabaret was founded in 1983 actually. I was in the 9th grade.
So how did you come to get involved in Rick's?
In August of 1998, I merged my company with Rick's.
And how many do you have now?
We have 19. We've been expanding very rapidly since 2005.
Are they all the same scope and size as the New York club, or is New
York one of the biggest?
No, we have several different brands, actually. New York is one of our smaller
clubs; we're limited in New York to only 10,000 square feet, since clubs aren't
allowed to be any larger than that. But if you take our recent acquisitions,
Las Vegas is 25,000 square feet, Philadelphia is 23,0000 square feet, Dallas is
25,000 square feet, and Miami is 47,000 square feet.
Are they all Rick's?
No. We have the Club Onyx brand, which caters to an upscale African American
clientele. We have the XTC cabarets, which are a more blue collar brand,
working guys; and then we have the Rick's cabaret, which is our high-end
white-collar.
How do you differentiate a white-collar club from a blue-collar
club?
In our white-collar clubs, you can get a $4 slice of pizza.
That's the
difference. We have steak & fries for $10.99, and that's a little grilled
sirloin that's not expensive. We don't serve any alcohol, you bring your own.
And the girls dance totally naked instead of just topless.
Is there a difference between the girls in different kinds of clubs?
Yea, I mean, there's definitely a little class difference. We'll probably have
a little rougher girls than we would at Rick's.
What about contact laws?
It varies from the region. We operate all our clubs within the limit of the
law, so whatever the law allows, we allow, and then we try to keep it within
those limits. If you go to Miami, it's fully nude, full contact. In some
states, there's a no-touch rule, period. You cannot touch the entertainer while
she's in a state of nudity.
Are they problems with customers that go beyond that?
Yeah, from time to time, but I mean you just gotta go up and talk to them; if
you go up and insult a guy like that, he's going to get defensive. I don't know
if you've ever seen the movie Roadhouse, but that's our philosophy, be
nice. Be nice until there's a reason not to be nice.
What's the status for your new Vegas club?
We just purchased it, and we'll have our big grand opening the 23rd or the 25th
of October.
So what was the club before you purchased it?
It was Scores.
Are the days of Scores dominance in New York over?
The papers sure seem to be painting it that way, that's for sure.
What'd you think of Scores?
The location on the west side was a little rough, but I think their biggest
problem is just the way they treated their entertainers.
You know, that's the
difference between Rick's and other clubs - we try to treat everyone with
respect, and we demand that all of our management do the same. If we get
reports that those rules aren't being followed, we're on it immediately,
correcting the situation. I think the difference is we look at entertainers as
people; other clubs look as entertainers as product.
Would you say Vegas is the capital of strips clubs?
It's Sin City. I think its one of the most competitive markets in the country,
for sure. I mean there's a lot of entertainment out there - there are a lot of
people out there looking for entertainment.
How do you guys differentiate yourselves from a major Vegas
competitor like Spearmint Rhino?
I think that our club facility is definitely better than theirs, because it's a
larger club. I think they'll be a very formidable competitor, and there's
plenty of room in the market for two clubs, three clubs, five clubs, ten clubs.
We don't really worry about our competition that much in most markets. Really
what we worry about is making sure that we're doing the right thing. Because if
you do the right thing, you make money, and you don't have to worry.
So is this a full-time gig, or are you branching out into other
ventures?
No, this is all I do. This is it. This is all I've ever done.
After 20 years, how has it changed?
I sold my baseball card collection for $42,000, and I used about $24,000 of it
to open up a club .You know, we just spent $18.7 million to buy the Scores in
Vegas, So it's a little different that the old days. My first club was 1,600
square feet, and now I have dressing areas that exceed 5,000 square ft.
If you didn't collect those cards, who knows where you'd be right
now.
I might've found another way to come up with the money, but that definitely
made it a lot easier for me.
And what about the celebrity factor? I know Howard Stern had a big
part in launching Scores, Bill Maher, John Stamos. How important is that in
getting your club known?
To me that's really an internal success, when you can get celebrities that want
to come to your business, especially when people want to come to our business
and don't care that people know they come to our business.
There's a lot I
know, 30 or 40 more that you don't know, because we don't disclose those names,
and we never would, because that's part of the reason Rick's is as successful
as is it.
Do celebrities get special treatment?
It depends on what they want. I think they just know to ask for it earlier, you
know - so they'll tell me, "I'll be coming in with a party of eight guys, I don't
want to be bothered by people." OK, no problem, we've got this room, we'll put
you guys in here, the host will bring some girls up, the girls you want will
stay in the room, the ones you don't, just let us know, we'll take care of it.
Why did you decide to go public?
I went public because I wanted to help my management team own part of the
company. It was my way of rewarding the guys that helped me make money. I was
tired of departments telling me how to run my business, so with a public
company, they're my partners, and they own stock in the company - but when
they're unhappy, instead of calling me up and complaining, and trying to tell me
how to do my job, they can sell their stock. I think a public company gives us
credibility; the biggest thing they like to say is, you know, it's the mob, or
you're cooking your books, or look how much money you spend and you're not
paying taxes. With a public company, we're audited, the FFC reviews us,
independent auditors come in and audit our financials. We can immediately
eliminate all of that negative stigma.
Who's Rick?
I have no idea; when Rick's was founded, I was 15 years old. I was just trying
to find out what girls were, let alone naked ones.
Have you only dated entertainers since you started working in ...
this business?
Since I was 19, not even a waitress. I haven't even thrown a waitress in there.
So you're not married?
I am married.
Did you marry an entertainer?
Oh yes. I've been married three times; my first wife was the only one who was
not an entertainer. Then I started dating one, then I opened up my own clubs,
and I was married for 11 years to my second wife. Then got divorced and married
my current wife,
Are they workers in your clubs?
My second wife was actually an entertainer in another club who was sent to our
club to spy on us, and I never sent her back.
So pretty much every time you've been involved in a relationship,
you've seen her naked before the relationship has actually gotten underway.
Would you buy a suit in the dark?
|