I sometimes browse around on business operations for sale here in the Rhine Valley area. This week, I came across a unique operation for sale....a brothel. Yep, a up and running brothel....around twenty ladies in the current operation, for sale as a business....for ninety-five thousand Euro (figure $120k).
It's on the Mainz side of the river, and has all the licenses required. Business clients are regular and business is fairly good, at least profitable as they say. The cause for the sale isn't given. It might be the hours required, the frustration with the young ladies, or just the background of the business wearing a guy out.
Forty years ago....it would have been a one-hundred-percent German owned and German-gal operated operation. I kinda doubt that is the case today.....with most of the ladies of a non-German origin.
The problem with German brothels (based on documentary pieces of the past).....you end up as a part-time baby-sitter, mental shrink, facility manager, customer complaint source, HR department, magnet for local mayors or corruption angles, and business manager. It's not a forty-hour a week job.....more likely to be of the sixty to eighty hour a week, and forget about taking more than three or four days of vacation at a time throughout the year. All of this....to keep everything functioning correctly and ensure that profits stay at a reasonable level.
I'd take a guess in the Mainz, Frankfurt and Wiesbaden region....there are probably over sixty brothels in operation. Some significant (Frankfurt), and some of bare notice.
From the ninety-five thousand cost....how much would a guy take as profit each year? Well....you don't own the building usually, and that means that roughly half the money coming in....will go toward rent, utilities and insurance. By the time you part out your costs....I'm guessing a guy could take home forty-five thousand Euro a year, and might occasionally bump up to sixty thousand Euro. But, then there's those taxes. Throw in the accountant having to manage cash flow and explain things, along with occasional lawyers to fight off the city council or some irate customer who felt things didn't go well with "wicked Wanda".
An American would look at the opportunity and ask a bunch of questions....wanting desperately to portray himself as a brothel manager....print up business cards....and hype his new profession to his high school or college buddies. Temptation usually drags on a guy enough....until he starts to think logically over what's involved and how you explain this new profession to grandma or the wife. Then you settle back and decide it's best to pass over such a move in life.
Some guy will eventually buy the operation.....probably run it somewhat successfully for four years, and then get stressed out. He'll decide to market it, and maybe a year or two later....sell it onto the next guy. A bit of profit....a bit of unreported income.....and a drain on your patience. At some point....enough is enough. And you say good-bye to Olga, Wanda, Ingrid, Minni, Bobo, and Oretta. Then you remind yourself.....that was their fake names and to be honest.....you never knew their real names anyway.
Such it is in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment