Motoring
7½ tips on how to organise your own event
Jordan Clarke was just 24 when he organised his own modified car show, Gravity. He shares his tips on how to create your own banging event.
Jordan Clarke is not your average 24 year old. After setting up his own modified car culture clothing company, SlammedUK, a few years ago, Clarke took it upon himself to create his own modified car show after growing frustrated with turning up to trade at poorly organised, poorly branded events.
Clarke wanted his event to have a big array of cars, he wanted the traders to feel well taken care of, and most of all, he wanted whole families – “from the kids to the granddads” – to be able to enjoy the festivities.
He launched the show, which he called Gravity, last year, and is already busy organising the second, set to be held at Stoneleigh Park on July 16 2017.
Jordan Clarke (r) handing out an award at Gravity
© Nicholas Lawson
RedBull.com picked Jordan’s brain on how to go about organising your own event, the essential ingredients that make up a good show and the pitfalls that first-timers need to avoid.
Here’s his advice…
1. Work on your branding
With SlammedUK, I trade at all the big UK shows and I saw a gap in the market for a show that does things a bit differently. I realised that a lot of the events I traded at were poorly organised and the branding wasn’t great.
I think branding is really important now, whereas 20 years or so ago, it was enough to just have a flyer or stick a load of words and dates on a car, and people would come. Now, you’ve got to stand out as a show and have a unique selling point, otherwise people won’t come.
2. Prepare yourself for financial risk
For me, financial risk was a massive thing. My show’s investor is actually my dad. I went to a few independent investors, and because it was a lot of money and a lot of risk, they said it wasn’t really for them and good luck. Then I spoke to my dad. We’ve got a strictly business arrangement rather than a father-and-son arrangement, and he owns half the business – it wasn’t a ‘here’s some money’ type of thing, because he’s a businessman, the same as I am.
Financial risk is just something you’ve got to deal with
But when you’re organising a show, financial risk is just something you’ve got to deal with. Obviously it’s a massive risk, but it was something I was confident I could overcome. We broke even on our first year, which was pretty good considering that everyone told me that I’d lose money in my first three years. So I was happy with that – especially because I was way over budget with my advertising. Why? I got a bit excited…
Jordan wanted an indoor and outdoor space
© Nicholas Lawson
3. Find the right venue
I spent the best part of a year trying to find a venue. My criteria were that I wanted it to be indoor and outdoor, because of the UK weather, and I wanted it to be central UK, around the Midlands, because I figured that then everybody could come, rather than if it was just up north or down south. Stoneleigh turned out to be perfect, and those guys are really good to work with.
I went to a few different venues before that, but they all just wanted way too much money, and one of them was only outside, so that wasn’t exactly what I wanted. Then someone suggested Stoneleigh; I went for a meeting, looked around the venue, and it was perfect – and perfect for expansion as well, which is part of my plan, because it’s such a huge space. Next year, we’ve got an extra hall booked for the predicted expansion of the show.
4. Don’t listen to the naysayers
Most of the organisers of the big shows told me that I’d lose money for the first three years, and that they wouldn’t do it if they were me and that it was a big, difficult thing to take on. But that made me want to do it more than to shy away from it. That’s the type of person I am: if someone tells me I can’t do something, then I make sure that I do it.
I was worried about not enough people turning up
I’m quite a confident person, so I wouldn’t have ever tried to organise a show or find an investor if I wasn’t 100 percent sure I could do it. But obviously there were a few things that I was still slightly worried about, like not enough people turning up for me to make the money back.
5. Be organised
Last year, it got to about three weeks before the show and I didn’t realise that I needed a PPL [Phonographic Performance Limited] licence for the DJs to play music at the venue. I just had no idea that was even a thing. But I have a dedicated event manager from Stoneleigh who’s amazing. She emailed me and asked if I had a PPL licence and I just said ‘What’s that?’ It was a really easy thing to get, but obviously because it was my first event, there was a big learning curve with that kind of thing.
If you don’t write at least some things down, you will get yourself in a muddle – and that’s when shows start to fall apart
I generally write things down a lot – I make to-do lists every day. With something like an event, obviously there are so many things to consider with admin – the cars, the tickets, licences for the DJs, the insurances, the venue – that if you don’t write at least some things down, you will get yourself in a muddle and things become disorganised, and that’s when shows start to fall apart.
Remember: organisation maketh the show
© Nicholas Lawson
6. Be motivated
A lot of people put on events and just sit back and wait to see how many people come, as opposed to getting out there and having phone calls and meetings every day with traders and sponsors and making sure everyone comes along. That’s something I spend three or four months doing, making sure the biggest names and brands are involved in the show. You have to be motivated.
Related
7. Make sure there’s a vibe
A lot of show goers these days won’t just go to a field where there are some cars and a couple of traders, like a lot of shows have been in the past; I find that they’re the type of events that tend to only last one or maybe two years. People want to go to a cool indoor venue, or an indoor and outdoor venue, where there’s good music and a lot going on.
A lot of the car shows just play drum and bass – and listening to that all day isn’t very nice
On that, music’s massively important. One of the biggest compliments we got from the show last year was how good our DJ was. He played things that I listen to like grime, hip-hop, RnB, ‘90s rap – just chilled out rap music basically. A lot of the car shows just play drum and bass and have audio cars [cars with big speaker systems] drumming the basslines into your head all day. As a trader, having to listen to that all day isn’t very nice. Music’s really important because it creates the vibe of the show.
7½. People like ice cream. Like, really like ice cream
The only bad thing that people said about my event last year was that the weather was too hot – and I can’t control that and I would rather it was too hot than raining all day – and that we didn’t have any ice cream vans.
A slammed ice cream van could be a gap in the market
In terms of what I’d do differently to last year, I’d have a bit more entertainment, more things going on throughout the day so people don’t get bored, and then some ice cream vans and a beer van. Do the ice cream vans need to be slammed? No, but that would be cool – it could be a bit of a gap in the market actually.
