Charlie Weaving is an inspirational character with a story to tell. You may not have heard of Foxhole Holdings but I could probably bet my house that you have heard of some of his ventures.
What ventures, I hear you ask… STK Ibiza, Oceana Beach Club… Are the bells ringing now? Of course they are. Even if you haven’t been to these places, I am sure one of your friends may have or its on your hit list of places to visit right?
Speaking to Charlie we asked, how did start Foxhole Holdings and what does it do?
Foxhole Holdings came about two years ago, what happened was there was three of us that got together to create the company. We all had different businesses all over the world in different sectors but we were struggling to control everything, so we decided to open our head office in Dubai. I have been in Dubai for the last eleven years, so I know the region really well.
We decided to open in Dubai so that firstly we could centralise all of the services bringing finance, HR, Marketing, Strategy all in one place and they provide a back of house support to all of the different business internationally.
Also Dubai has a great talent pool of incredibly talented finance people, HR people, Marketing people generally just very good skilled labour from the Indian sub continent and South East Asia, so Dubai was a perfect location for us. We are a private equity firm, we make investments across the lifestyle sector. We also have e-commerce businesses, ladies fashion businesses, ladies spa businesses, nightclubs and restaurants as you know.
We are just young hardworking people that want to move forward, we have a different approach to most other private equity firms which is that we don’t do massive amount of due diligence or feasibility studies or anything like that. We really work with our gut feeling and common sense and if the projects excite us personally that is how we like to move forward. You spend more of your life working than you do enjoying, so you need to enjoy your work.
What are you focusing most on at the moment, the lifestyle brands like STK Ibiza, Ocean Beach Club. I hear you are opening a club in Dubai called Base, or are you focusing more on online retail?
We have a lot going on all the time, Base club which we have invested into in Dubai is a massive 120 table super club hopefully we can get it open for the end of this month and it will be open for three or four weeks before it gets too hot, the idea of this is that we can give people a really nice experience for four weeks and everyone goes away for Summer with a really good taste in their mouth about Base Dubai. Then from 1st October we will be launching full power with Base open every Thursday and Friday night. Big hip hop DJs and big house DJs that is the model, it is very artist driven because it is a super club. So we have a lot of focus on that at the moment.
Our e commerce businesses, isawitfirst UK and isawitfirst Middle East, we are launching those in mid May. We have a series of events going on at Ocean Beach Club as well with isawitfirst. isawitfirst takeovers basically.
Really cool business, ladies fast fashion, affordable next day delivery. We are really excited about it, it’s a big one for us. Then obviously we have a massive focus coming into Summer with STK Ibiza and Ocean Beach Club. Obviously STK is the new one and we opened it with a big splash and it is looking incredibly positive this season, if you look across all of our social platforms and review platforms, people are talking very highly about that and it really excited us. We also have an expansion plan for the STK brand as well, so we are gearing up for that.
It seems like you are really focusing on STK Ibiza, how did it come about that you took on that franchise? I hear you are the first people to franchise STK Ibiza.
Yeah basically we had been in STK in Vegas in the Cosmo and been the W in LA STK. We just really loved the brand and The One Group’s ethos, so we made contact with them, we got on really well with them. They understood our vision, obviously, we regionalised the brand to Ibiza, because Ibiza is a big late night party place. We saw this gap in the market for STK Ibiza, we took the opportunity. We were the first group to purchase a licence from The One Group and we just went forward and made it happen and it was a great success and we are really happy with the situation.
How does STK Ibiza crowd differ from Ocean Beach Club, are they different offerings?
Yeah completely different offerings, Ocean Beach Club is very high volume in San Antonio and is 90% British. STK Ibiza is very mixed demographic from across the world because of its location, it is right on the Golden Mile in front of the Marina. It is very high end and completely different crowd, there isn’t much crossover at all. However we do have a big British following for STK Ibiza as well, purely because they love the offering. With Ibiza being seasonal it is very difficult to get that world class offering of food and service and experience as you are only open for a short period of time and if you have to recruit and import all of the food. However we manage to make that happen so now really if you want a great meal with great service up to international standards in Ibiza the only place to go is STK Ibiza.
If you were a stranger and went to STK Ibiza what would you recommend to order off the menu?
We have loads of really cool things, like homemade lobster fish fingers which are incredible. We have a big raw bar with Japanese oyster shooters with plenty of cerviche and carpaccios. I would definitely order the massive tomahawk steak and this year we are doing a special which is a half rack of tomahawk which is 10kg.
Where do you get your steak?
Everything is USDA, so it is the top grade of American steak. It is flown in from America flat backpacked fresh to Ibiza for us and we have a special broiler from USA which gives intense heat to top/bottom of the steak. That is the secret to why the steaks are so great and plenty of butter. If you were a big group I would go family style so you have a selection of the different starters and raw bar and then I would move on to a massive half rack of Tomohawk.
What about cocktails, which would you mention in particular?
There are loads of signature STK Ibiza cocktails that are the same wherever you go in the world and they are some of the best in the world, such as the classic porn star martini which is a great drink. When it comes to cocktails it’s unbeatable.
There has been a lot of celebrity hype at STK Ibiza, especially A list and this year you have the Global Gift Gala and what do you have in mind this year and do you expect celebrities to come?
Yeah I mean we have still quickly established ourselves as the number 1 restaurant/lounge in Ibiza now. Due to our location the experience and the quality of food/service any celebrity on the island will be coming to STK Ibiza because they have to.
Can you name some of the celebrities that have been?
We have had loads of people, Nicole Scherzinger, Eva Longoria, David Guetta and loads of British celebrities everyday.
With Base Club Dubai, how is that going to work? Is the level of celebrities and acts going to different? What are they like in Dubai?
Yeah Base is great, Dubai is very artist driven. People love their artists, obviously, a big money country, very table driven everyone wants their own space.
How many tables at Base?
We have 120 tables at Base and I like I said before it is going to be house music one night and hip hop the other night and A class artists throughout.
What kind of artists?
Everyone from Soloman, to Wycliffe John to Trey Songz to Rick Ross, Marco Carola. Every big hip hop artist in the world and every big house DJ in the world.
What’s your goal for Fox Hole Holdings as a company?
We want to continue growing at this rapid pace we have been growing. We want to get another 25 lifestyle venues under our belt. We have a big vision for the e-commerce business in the middle east, we think that there is a bright future in that and we just want to keep expanding in strategic investment. We base our investments on our gut feeling and what excites us and common sense. We take a lot of risk but we pull them all off and we do pretty well we have a good record.
Where do you see your company in 20 years?
The goal and dream is the skies the limit, where 3 people who sit on out board. We are very ambitious and we have a vision we want to be the biggest and best in the world at what we are doing. The skies the limit and we really want to be at the top.
Because we are interviewing you for flavourmag, what is your favourite ice cream?
My favourite flavour is salted caramel
50 cent and Axwell will be performing at the opening week of Base… If you want to find out further information check out the website: www.basedubai.com
