By Melissa Sim

A YOUNG entrepreneur here has bravely pumped the money he saved up for an MBA into a debt-laden nightspot, with an eye to turning it around.

Mr Zach Wen, all of 25 and still in university, has committed $500,000 up front to the floundering Supperclub with a business partner; the pair will invest another $2.5 million over two years.

The lean, self-confident business student at the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) told The Straits Times he is doing this without help from his retired businessman father and retired accountant mother.

'I haven't taken any money from my parents. In fact, I'm also paying my own fees at SIM,' he said.

He is not going into this venture blind.

He has a track record in party organising and has been a consultant for Clarke Quay clubs Attica and Arena, where his job was to pull in the crowds using his contacts.

He and his business partner Lee Jia Jun, 21, now own 51 per cent of Supperclub - but have also inherited $500,000 of its debts.

Mr Wen said he could have just let the Odeon Towers nightspot close down and then approached its Dutch owners for a franchise.

But he said: 'I want everyone to win. The creditors get paid off, the investors get back what they invested, and I have the rights to expand.'

It is not the easiest route surely - and one which puts his own funds at risk.

He said, shaking his head: 'People think I am trying to do funny things, when actually I want to show that by being ethical and responsible, you can also make money.'

He got his feet wet in the party-organising circuit at 18, when he organised an 'end of A levels' party for some friends. The event pulled in about 300 people and earned him $1,400.

Hooked, he went on to set up a nightspot portal called Lifestylebash.com, organising monthly parties and even speed dating events at one time.

His next stop was as a club promoter for DXO, Arena, Attica and Gotham Penthouse, putting together regular parties there and herding people to them. He also advised the clubs on the music to play, pricing their drinks and managing their marketing via Facebook, SMS and blogs.

He considers Arena his first big job.

He said of the club: 'It had no direction and kept changing its concepts, so I went in and convinced them that I could turn it around.'

That he did.

Within a year, he established Wednesdays and Thursdays as ladies' nights at Arena; Saturday nights were for Lifestylebash Live, which featured interactive games and live bands.

With Mr Lee, he made up to $10,000 a month.

He also learnt a hard lesson when the resurrected club terminated his second contract.

'We felt made use of, but we were also not smart enough to protect ourselves by asking for shares,' he said.

So by the time Supperclub approached him to pull off a turnaround, he had wised up. He negotiated to buy it over instead.

He flew to Amsterdam to meet its global head in September and sealed the deal in three days.

Mr Johannes Franciscus Schut, the representative for the club's investors in the Dutch city, said he realised the international chain needed a 'true local partner to make a success of Supperclub in Singapore', as it had not understood the market here well enough before opening its outlet here.

'It also proved to be quite difficult to manage a club from the other side of the world,' he added.

Mr Wen said the problem with the club was that it had been positioned as a classy restaurant-bar for expatriates. He aims to relaunch it as a dance club for young professionals and return it to the black in three months.

He has come up against people who do not take him seriously because of his youth.

He said: 'It's hard to be a young boss. When you're soft, people will step over your head. When you're tough, people think you're a young punk.'

He hopes to win people over by being logical and sincere, he said.

He appeared to do just that with Mr Schut, who said that while he was surprised by Mr Wen's age - or lack thereof - he also felt his 'drive and purposefulness' during their meetings.

Mr Wen has been advised to wear a suit to 'look the part', but prefers to stick to his uniform of open-neck shirt and trousers. He gets to his business meetings by bus and train.

'I appreciate their good intentions, but I just prefer being myself. I think instead of being cool, I would rather spend the time making the club cool for my guests,' he declared.

His vision: To get it listed in seven years.

And what if this does not happen?

Ever ready with a comeback, he said: 'I have faith it will, but if not, people pay for an MBA, and I'll pay for this lesson.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.