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Enoch Yiu

Naomi Rovnick

Ocean Park chairman Allan Zeman and  chief executive Tom Mehrmann are not typical executives.
Visitors to the aquatic theme park last Halloween may have unknowingly bumped into Mr Mehrmann standing still as a statue under lashings of blue face paint, disguised as the Chinese god of hell.
Mr Zeman, the owner of the Lan Kwai Fong bar strip with a gift for publicity rivalling that of flamboyant British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, has dressed up as both a giant jellyfish and a fishnet-stockinged Caribbean samba girl to promote the park to media over the past few years.
Beneath all this larking about are inspiring success stories.
Mr Zeman, a Canadian Jew who has been in Hong Kong for 39 years and now has Chinese nationality, began transforming what was then a dowdy backstreet of rundown warehouses on the fringes of Central into Lan Kwai Fong 20 years ago.
In 2003, the government persuaded the entertainment tycoon to lead the transformation of Ocean Park.
Mr Zeman needed a new challenge after he and business partner Bruce Rockowitz pocketed a cash-and-share windfall worth HK$2.2 billion from selling their textile business, Colby International, to Li & Fung in 2001.
Years of neglect, coupled with the heavy  losses wreaked by the 1998 Asian financial crisis and the 2003 Sars outbreak, had made Ocean Park an eyesore. It had  made HK$200 million of losses in five years, the paint was peeling off and visitors were thin on the ground. 
Today the publicly funded business is   drawing throngs of local families and mainland tourists. It  logged a HK$204.7 million surplus in 2007-08, up 19.5 per cent  year on year.
The perma-tanned Mr Zeman, who cuts a slim figure in his trademark tailored suit and open-necked white shirt and looks much younger than his 60 years, was last year named the DHL/South China Morning Post businessman of the year.  
Mr Mehrmann, a  soft-spoken American with 31 years of theme park experience who Mr Zeman recruited in late 2003, received the best executive award in 2007.
On Monday night, the pair addressed SCMP readers at Meet the Corporate Architects, a series of monthly events run by the SCMP, DHL and the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, to share the secrets of their success.
In an exclusive interview, they also revealed the impact of the financial crisis on Ocean Park and Lan Kwai Fong (the answer is both businesses are doing pretty well).
Business leaders often suggest balance-sheet management and global strategy when asked about their recipe for success.
Mr Zeman's version is: 'Have fun, be creative, love what you do.'
His unconventional approach clearly works.
He donned the jellyfish outfit to generate publicity for the April 2006 launch of Sea Jelly Spectacular, the first major new attraction built under the park's HK$5.5 billion revamp, which will be completed in 2013. The resulting worldwide news headlines were a massive image boost for a venue previously associated with peeling paint and plunging profits.
By 2013, Ocean Park's attractions will double from 35 to 70. A funicular railway ferrying visitors through the large hill at the centre of the park will be built by this autumn.
The park could have sunk when Disney arrived in Hong Kong in 2005. But Mr Mehrmann set out to make it totally different from Disney. Animals were the main selling point, along with events and attracting mainland tourists.
'We looked at differential values and the things that allowed us to stand tall and looked at whether we complemented rather than competed with Disney. They have fake animals. We have real animals. The difference is real,' he says.
He and Mr Zeman introduced a wedding service where couples take their vows in front of leaping dolphins and barking sea lions or exchange rings  in the coral reef.
Since 2006, summer  visitors have experienced a  Caribbean carnival with Cuban dancers while Halloween revellers have been spooked by  Chinese ghosts, including the heavily disguised Mr  Mehrmann.
The pair targeted mainland tourists by launching a Guangzhou sales office in mid-2006.  The park had more than 5 million visitors last year, half of  them from the mainland.
Ocean Park was the fifth most visited theme park in Asia last year, while Disney came seventh,   Themed Entertainment Association says.
Lan Kwai Fong was always about doing something different, too, Mr Zeman says.
'In the 1970s, when I started Lan Kwai Fong, there was nowhere you could get a good streetside meal in Hong Kong. If you wanted somewhere nice to eat, you had to put a tie on - and I refuse to wear ties - and go to a posh hotel.'
With Lan Kwai Fong, Mr Zeman has no competitors. He owns the strip and has no landlords because other property developers  do not vie against him to buy the real estate.
'The building the California complex is now in - it was an old supermarket. The area was very rundown. There were a few shops selling embroidered table cloths and odd things from China,' he explains.
'None of the local property developers knew what I was doing. But I knew as property became available, I wanted to buy it, to create clusters of restaurants and bars.'
 Ocean Park is rumoured to be doing better in the first quarter of  this year than in the same period  last year. Is it recession-proof?
 Mr Mehrmann: Attendance is up about 7 per cent.  We can pinpoint the growth over the three months to the fact long-haul travel is down. Hoteliers and airlines are lowering their rates. So more people from Shanghai and the eastern seaboard are coming in group packages. Profit is also holding up. We are getting more guests. It's low-spending guests but we are making it up in volume.
 Mr Zeman, Lan Kwai Fong is very insulated from the downturn in that you own all the property. How are sales holding up?
 The drinking  and beverage business is up a couple of per cent (declines to define exact figure). The food business is down a little bit because there's not as much corporate entertaining going on. That's down about 8 per cent. But it's  okay.
 What was Lan Kwai Fong's last annual revenue and net income? You own the property and the drinks are  costly. Analysts say you  may have a 60 to 80 per cent operating  margin.
 Mr Zeman: We don't say. We are private and so those figures are never disclosed.
 Is Ocean Park recruiting people? Disney cut 1,900 jobs worldwide last month.
 Mr Mehrmann: We are shortly adding 100 jobs. We are in real growth mode.
 Mr Zeman: It's the same in Lan Kwai Fong. We have just taken on some key management staff for international projects, such as the Lan Kwai Fong [entertainment and shopping centre project] in Chengdu. We are also doing a project in Guangzhou and looking at projects on Xiamen Island. The mainland is a great growth market at the moment.
 Will you build an Ocean Park abroad in the next few years?
 Mr Mehrmann: When we have finished the redevelopments in the next few years and feel we can divert our attention. We have had visits from people from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia.  Many people in other countries want to replicate Ocean Park. It is highly likely but the timing is most critical.
 You are running the city's two most fun businesses. You are both expatriates. Do you think Hong Kong people could be more creative?
 Mr Zeman: Because we were a British colony for 100 years, Hong Kong people didn't have to think too much because the government just did things, no one questioned. The British did a semi-decent job. They did a decent job with the roads. But they failed in many other ways. Since 1997, the city  has been changing. The civil service still doesn't have a lot of creative people. The system is set up to stifle you. You are protecting public money and so the rules are set up in government for everybody making collective decisions. But I do believe  we are growing up. I believe  Hong Kong will continue to go from strength to strength.
 Mr Zeman,  you are a director of Wynn Resorts. Las Vegas Sands Corp last year suspended construction on a US$3.3 billion  casino and hotel project on the Cotai Strip. Do you think Macau has been a flop?
 Macau has not failed totally, but there are many empty buildings and sites and the expansion was too quick. Las Vegas Sands in particular was in a hurry. The Cotai Strip has not materialised. The vision was that it would attract lots of people. The numbers are still very good for Macau, but its not what was envisioned originally. You have to grow organically and build audience. You cannot expect overnight just to build a strip.
 What is the strangest costume you have both worn?
 Mr Mehrmann: I dressed up as the Chinese god of hell last Halloween. I had dressed up as western monsters in previous years. But last year the team said: 'Why don't you do something Chinese?' I went to one spot in the park and never moved for six hours and had hundreds of photos taken. They didn't know it was me. It was brilliant costume and make-up. I did that for two or three nights. I spent about an hour in make-up. The guests reacted beautifully to it, and when they found out I was foreign, it became a greater novelty.
 Mr Zeman: At my first press conference, we had the jellyfish attraction, so a couple of weeks before, I asked the team what was going on. They said they had four little girls dressed as jellyfish, so I said: 'Maybe I will be a jellyfish. Why not?' I looked absolutely ridiculous. The pictures were hysterical. That photo  was in Bangkok, on the international newswires, it went all over the world. I then dressed as a samba girl for a Caribbean festival, wearing high heels and fishnet stockings and dancing. It was painful to wear the heels but very fun.
The next Meet the Corporate Architects event is on May 15, featuring Clement Kwok, the chief executive of Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, and Keith Griffiths, the chairman and Asia director of Adeas




Fun spells success for Ocean Park leaders