Words Andrew Yang

www.vinyl-group.com

Vinyl Group is one of a gang of new firms in China mixing business with design.

Vinyl Group assembled MAO’s tour de force chandelier out of surplus PVC pipe left over from another job, which they glazed white. By using repurposed materials from their warehouse, they were able to brand the nightclub “green,” an added draw for Shanghai hipsters, now coughing themselves into eco-consciousness.

It’s Thursday night, past 2 A.M. in Shanghai, and, tucked in the middle of a quiet street in the French Concession, the nightclub MAO is packed with an ex-pat crowd, dancing to a Spanish dj. They happily waited to get past the velvet rope and paid about $13 to get in, even though most bars don’t charge a cover. Walking through a narrow corridor of LED-embedded glass, clubbers enter into a dark, strobe light–pulsing space with a long, central bar and a striking chandelier of bent white pipes overhead. An open dance floor is in front of the dj booth, and plush VIP banquettes are situated in the back. The whole scene feels like one big after party with all the “right” people. Few of the revelers at MAO, which refers not to the late chairman but is an acronym for Music Art Oasis, probably know that this club-of-the-moment was not long ago a struggling Chinese-style café. Its dramatic transformation is the work of an enterprising, Shanghai-based design firm called Vinyl Group, whose principals— Berwin Tanco, Noel Lee, and Ben Ling—are thirtysomething recent arrivals who came to China in search of their fortunes. The firm is just one of an emerging breed of Shanghai design studios that are abandoning the conventions of the designer-client relationship to think and operate like entrepreneurs. “When a client hires us as designers, they want us to think about everything,” says Tanco. “Everything,” for him, means not only design, but also the business plan and corporate identity.

“As for the clients we meet, we always bump into people who are distressed with businesses that are not doing well,” he continues. “When we look at a failing business, most of the time it is poor management and poor design. Beauty is not part of the business model.” MAO is a case in point. The owner of the original café was a teetotal lawyer with little vision or know-how. His café lacked customers, but it had a large floorspace and low rent. The partners saw an opportunity. They agreed to reinvent it as a club in return for an equity stake. Its success has provided another hip interior for their portfolio, and steady cash flow to fund their firm’s new ventures.

Vinyl Group created an elevated lounge area, outfitted with custom-made furniture, for guests to watch the action at the bar and on the dance floor.

The partners pounce on such opportunities wherever they find them and have branched out into events planning and real estate development. The synergy between these divisions works to their competitive advantage. By using secondhand or overstocked materials from their other real estate projects, they were able to build the stylish MAO on the cheap. They crafted the dramatic chandelier out of leftover PVC pipe glazed white, and in the bathroom, cleverly installed water pipes—some working, some not—to resemble an artwork. “We do a hundred projects a year, and we’re hands on, so we know what’s available in our warehouse,” says Tanco. In addition to saving money by using “recycled” materials, MAO was able to promote itself as a “green” nightclub. And Vinyl Group’s events arm then programmed cool parties there to attract the crowds that now keep it busy every night.

With each new project and each new business, the firm gets closer to designing and executing its own projects on its own terms. “Every year, we have 100 ideas,” says Tanco. “It’s great to be able to have the resources to implement them on our own, and China is a good place for that. The economy is booming, and the new emphasis on design will just become more important. - AY

Photos Blain Crelin