March 14, 2018

Meet Weijia Gao of August Karaoke Box in Tempe

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Weijia Gao.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Weijia. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
We are the first Private-room Karaoke in Arizona since 2011. I was a MBA student when I started the company. We just been through a complete renovation in 2017.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It was very hard since we have never started a business before, and we don’t know anything about karaoke and sound system. There were no mentors or anybody who can give us advice on how to open a business. We have spended thousands to learn the correct way. For example we have tried almost every single karaoke system on market, each time will cost us $30k to change everything. We have tried so many sound systems as well, even now we still have a lot of the old sound systems sitting in my garage. It also took us a long time to learn how to manage a company. 7 years went by, we have learned so much! Now the company is well organized and all the employees are well trained.
on 2017 we went through 6 month of renovation, I designed all the rooms myself. The drawing was over 100 pages. I picked all the color and decorations over the phone, and all the furnitures are custom made based on the different size of the rooms. We went from 7 room + hall to 11 rooms with all different themes.

Please tell us about August Karaoke Box.
We’ve been hosting amazing nights of private karaoke since 2011, which means some students have spent their entire college careers singing at August Karaoke Box. Year after year, they rent our rooms and choose from a gigantic library of songs, getting swept up in the music with their friends. They love us because we don’t have an age limit, we’re open 24 hours, and we keep our services professional while making our guests feel at home. We’ve recently renovated in order to give our community state-of-the-art equipment and more chances to book. We even have a BYOB license so you can sip on your favorite drinks while you’re here! Come sing what’s hot. Come sing hits from across Asia. Come out for an experience in Tempe that you’ll remember long after you’ve graduated.

When we opened, we were the first Asian-style karaoke box in Tempe. In the years since, we’ve expanded, grown, and renovated in order to continuously give our customers a better experience every time they come. We’re BYOB, BYOF, and we have private rooms perfect for any occasion. We even have a library of over 130,000 songs!

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I love singing and dancing. My favorite memories are always when I was singing or dancing. My mom will take me to private karaoke box in China and I will perform in front of her business partners. Everybody always having a good time and mom said some big contracts was done in the karaoke box. Karaoke was part of the Asian culture and this is why I want to bring that memery back to the US.

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