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	Sept/Oct 2006

Anyone can throw a nice party, but it takes a talented event promoter to organize occasions that inspire attendees to talk for days about who was there and what happened.

Anyone can throw a nice party, but it takes a talented event promoter to organize occasions that inspire attendees to talk for days about who was there and what happened. Event promoters JJ Walker and Kevin Larson know that partygoers won’t be satisfied with a plate of food and loud music. These days it takes much more to entertain people, and more importantly, to build a successful event promotion business.

JJ Walker made his career choice the first time the police ended one of his parties. The event took place several years ago near Colorado State University, where Walker and business partner Jeremy Ostermiller attended college. “It was a six-apartment party with 12 kegs,” Walker remembers. “A thousand people showed up, and it took the cops two hours to break it up. We got evicted, so we decided maybe we should do this in a bar.”

They found an Asian restaurant that allowed the pair to throw 18-and-older parties as long as they shared a percentage of the cover charge. Those parties were well attended, so Walker and Ostermiller started their company, Party Around Town.

“That’s how we paid for college,” Walker says. “It was something that sort of developed.”

They moved from apartment parties to larger events. The biggest, Walker says, involved food vendors, 15 musical bands, and two days of indoor/outdoor festivities at Matrix, a club in Fort Collins. The company generated revenue not only from the 1,000 attendees who paid a cover price, but also from the food vendors who paid for booth space and from sponsors who put up banners.

During their senior year, the two changed the name of their company. “We decided Party Around Town was a kids’ name,” Walker says. They settled on JFly Presents. “Both our names start with a J, and when someone says ‘you’re fly,’ it’s good.”

After college, the two worked in publishing for a while, but they devoted most of their energy to their new business. “A large portion of it is networking with the right people, to get those people to go to the events,” he says. “You can set up a party and have the right five people who bring 500 people, or you can spend thousands of dollars in advertising and hope you get those 500 people there. That’s sort of the key.”

Advertising has changed in the seven years since they’ve been in business. For years the two public relations majors advertised the parties by printing “very cheap fliers” and using word of mouth marketing. Today they spread the word through text messaging to their database of 3,500 names.

“We really don’t have numbers on how successful it is, but typically we see a strong pull on events that have text messaging,” Walker says. “People have to look at it because it’s on their phone, as opposed to email, where if you have 28 percent open the mail, that’s great.”

They have had dismal failures and fabulous successes. One surprise hit was a Real World reunion party at Vinyl nightclub in June. The event attracted 230 people at about $30 a ticket, which was the largest party the club had had since its reopening. A few days later, a party for singer/songwriter/rapper T-Pain attracted less than half the people that the organizers needed to break even. “That was an eight grand loss,” Walker says. “In the past it would have hurt, but now it’s sort of part of it. As a promoter you keep going.”

Walker and Ostermiller have launched Fly Vision, a media agency firm that specializes in reaching the 21- to 35-year-old target demographic. The firm can help companies reach the young audience through emails, text messaging, and by building pages on MySpace.com.
New partners Jeremy Dodson and Jay Korpi will help Walker and Ostermiller further expand JFly Presents. They came in, Walker says, “to help us build an empire and a solid organization.”
Kevin Larson has trouble thinking of an unusual party that he has organized. It’s just that there have been so many.

“We primarily throw erotic based parties, so every night is bizarre by society standards,” says Larson, whose company is called Kevin Larson Presents. “When you have customers volunteering to get on stage and take off their bras and have feather boa bras made for them, I’d say that’s a little out of the norm.”

But, he adds, “They are very nice boas.”

His parties are sensual events. Not sexual, his website cautions, but sensual. For example, the Saturday night parties at the Alley Cat are themed events that focus on lack of pretension but plenty of eroticism. “We push the boundaries a little bit, but not so you wake up in the morning and regret what you’ve done,” he says.

Larson wasn’t always an event promoter specializing in the sensual. He used to sell medical supplies, but says he changed careers when he realized he had an ethical problem. “It was fun for a while, but then they wanted me to tell customers things that weren’t true, and I had an integrity issue and a thing about lying,” he says. “And it was boring.”
He then helped with some school-related fundraisers, then opened a lingerie store called Pandora’s Toy Box. There was no advertising budget, so Larson had to be creative about getting media and consumer attention for the new business. So he threw erotic parties at the store. The strategy worked, and the store did well for a few years.

He launched Kevin Larson presents about seven years ago. There are other event promotion companies, so he knew he had to find a niche. “Our whole theory is to be original, and to create events that create interaction,” he says. “We go out of our way to find things that aren’t commonplace. You won’t see us doing a ‘New York, New York’ party.”

Instead, he and his two employees and 60 subcontractors throw parties such as Artistic Eroticism every Saturday at the Alley Cat, a nightclub on Colfax and Glenarm. His company has also organized events in Snowmass, Beverly Hills, and Las Vegas. “We’re showing that sexuality can be fun, artistic, and beautiful without being smutty, without causing problems,” he says. “We’re not about the sticky porn theater with the lecherous man.”

The events attract a high end, martini beautiful crowd. The seedy porn customer isn’t attracted to these events. “The atmosphere is not conducive, so they don’t feel comfortable,” Larson says. “If we do get them, we ask them to leave.” And although he has a black belt in karate, he insists he’s never had to use his martial arts skills at an event.

The company handles not only the creative aspect of coming up with interesting entertainment and talent, but also the logistics of the catering, music, and other details that people don’t think about when they think party planning might be fun. He says his education – he was pre-med at the University of Colorado – helps in this business, because of the analytical skills he honed.

Things haven’t always gone smoothly. He closed Pandora’s after the 2001 downturn. “We had a year of blah there,” he says. “After September 11, women weren’t so impressed with buying $120 bras when the economy was down.”

He continued net-working and building new business. He won Rise Nightclub as a client, and began working on their events and entertainment. After a year a half of working with Rise, he moved on to other clients, helping them find dancers and other entertainers for events.

He says business grew about 30 percent last year, and he hopes to build Kevin Larson Presents by another 20 percent this year. He plans to open a lounge in Cherry Creek this fall, based on the same premise that has been successful for him over the years: “Everyone wants an escape,” he says. “Everyone wants a good time.”