HE is no Bruce Lee, but like the legendary kungfu actor, homegrown mega-illusionist JC Sum elevated a traditionally obscure art to a new level of popularity and acclaim. While Bruce Lee brought Chinese martial arts to the West, Mr Sum - who was referred by MagicSeen, Europe's largest magic magazine, as 'The Ace in Asia' - brought magic into the mainstream market in Asia.
In managing his business, Mr Sum, creative producer and founder of magic production house Concept:Magic, adopted Bruce Lee's philosophy, which is to be shapeless, 'like water', in that water can take the shape of its container but at the same time, it has a fixed mass and can do considerable damage when it hits.
Mr Sum said: 'It's exactly the same thing. We have a goal, a position. How we get there, we can manoeuvre based on our market conditions. Singapore is an example of a place where you won't think of magic as traditionally a viable or successful business because of economic constraints, government policy, our social norms, social conditioning.'
But Mr Sum managed to move, like water, around these constraints and establish himself as a professional world-class illusionist, with his 'full-service magic production house'. Concept:Magic is Mr Sum's take on the hit movie Mission: Impossible, whose title implies 'Whatever the mission is, it will be impossible'. 'So same way I saw it was: any concept that can be thought of, we can infuse magic into it, hence it's Concept:Magic.'
Proclaiming to be a magic production house, Concept:Magic produces live stage shows, media content for broadcast media as well as publishes books and fabricates original illusion props for the magic community.
Setting up Concept:Magic seemed like a natural progression for Mr Sum, who picked up magic from books when he was 12. In 1993, Mr Sum started performing professionally when he was still in junior college. As the projects he was getting as a freelancer grew, Mr Sum had to register a company since the billing and invoicing could no longer be done by an individual.
Concept:Magic was set up as a sole proprietorship in 1999 with $20,000, which was all of Mr Sum's savings at that time when he was still an Arts and Social Sciences undergraduate at the National University of Singapore.
Mr Sum started small, first doing what most in the market were already doing. However, he had all along recognised the potential for corporate magic in Singapore's children magic-saturated market.
Citing 'close-up magic' (or now known as 'street magic'), as his true love, Mr Sum wrote to food and beverage managers of hotels and restaurants to be given the opportunity to perform close-up magic, table-to-table for the Sunday brunch patrons.
Banking on the relatively novel concept, Mr Sum performed at various hotels like the Hilton and Shangri-La. With the contacts of industry partners, such as event organisers, gained through the course of performing close-up magic, Mr Sum went on to perform for private parties and stage shows. Along the way, Mr Sum won awards from the International Brotherhood of Magicians and published lecture notes. These helped to build up Mr Sum's credibility in his early career. With Concept:Magic, Mr Sum brought magic to a higher level, going into illusions and high-end corporate magic.
A highlight of his career was last year's mega-illusion, a first in South- east Asia, performed for The Straits Times' 162nd anniversary celebrations. It was one of the events featured in the highly selective Magic magazine, which is published in Las Vegas. Already, two mega-illusions involving the reading of 1,000 people's minds and the vanishing of a MRT train are in the pipelines and Mr Sum is just looking for the right partners to materialise them.
True to his sophisticated approach to magic, Mr Sum adopted a moniker, 'The Thinking Man's Magician', in 2003. The name is a brand which captures his unique selling proposition, which is to cater exclusively to the intellectual corporate audience.
The same goes for Concept:Magic. Not one to believe in brand extension, Mr Sum is very focused on specialising in high-end corporate magic with Concept:Magic.
To separate his different business units, he set up a partnership with online magic shop Magic Boutique, which is owned by his protege, Ning Cai. Called Mighty Magic Factory, it clearly differentiates itself from Concept:Magic by focusing on children's edutainment.
Indeed, Mr Sum speaks like a business guru, citing Jack Trout and Al Ries' book Positioning and other books like Focus as inspiration for his marketing strategies.
Well-read and innovative, Mr Sum came up with his 'Magic Branded Entertainment' after reading about 'Branded Content' in business and financial magazine Business 2.0.
Customising his shows for his mostly corporate audiences, Mr Sum moves away from product placement at corporate launches and weaves the brand message into his sophisticated performances.
One example: at a Nokia phone launch a few years ago, instead of just making the phone disappear and reappear, Mr Sum placed the phone in the participants' hands and made it float above their palms magically. That aptly conveyed the message that the phone is small and light.
Mr Sum keeps himself updated on market trends and believes in market segmentation. Citing the success of Toys 'R' Us, the giant toy store chain, Mr Sum said: 'If you are focused and create high value, your position becomes very strong.' But being focused on his position in the market also entails sacrifice. Staying focused has helped Concept:Magic to do well.
While declining to reveal the figures for last year, Mr Sum expects the company to bring in half a million dollars in turnover this year. Mr Sum said: 'While I say I am focused on my position, it doesn't mean I am only one-track (minded).' Indeed, during the peak of Sars in 2003, Mr Sum averted a drop in business by going into his illusion book publishing and prop building business, which caters to the international market.
Brimming with ideas to take his craft further, Mr Sum has already identified some of the areas which his company can tap into. For instance, he expects world-class entertainment to be in high demand once the integrated resorts here are ready. He is also confident that magic can be a part of new media content on television or Internet TV.
Observing the lack of magic shows compared to musicals, Mr Sum said: 'We could develop magic into theatre.' Instead of wielding the nunchaku, perhaps we can expect to see the Bruce Lee of magic tackle his opponents on stage by making them disappear.
