Be it through Dîner en Blanc, Harvest Haus or the Deighton Cup, Jordan Kallman and Tyson Villeneuve have made it their mission to bring engagement and a sense of belonging to what has casually been labelled as the No Fun City.
Both principals of The Social Concierge grew up in Vancouver, travelled extensively and spent time in the corporate world before founding their event design agency. Today, it runs 40 to 50 events annually and caters to corporate clients that include Nike (NYSE:NKE), Porsche and Lululemon (Nasdaq:LULU).
When working with a company like Lululemon, the agency charges a flat fee and works within a budget to produce a unique event tailored to the client’s brand.
What Kallman and Villeneuve are best known for, however, are their signature events.
“We just want to build a city full of fun,” said Kallman, who worked with the International Olympic Committee prior to launching the event agency, which evolved out of his and Villeneuve’s experience in branding and event planning, and the desire to go beyond the conventional. “And five years ago when we started The Social Concierge, there were very few events that were happening in big outdoor public spaces.
Villeneuve, who spent time on the corporate side of companies including Bacardi and Grey Goose, said launching the company was a way of spreading creative wings that wasn’t possible in his previous work.
“At a certain point, the mind just keeps wanting more,” Villeneuve said. “And we really wanted to go beyond what our roles at the time would allow us to do.”
But going above and beyond with event planning is not easy, nor is it cheap. The fifth-anniversary event of Dîner en Blanc held in August hosted 6,500 guests, 75 performers and “events within events,” all in a public space. Harvest Haus, which hosted two weeks of stein clinking and foot stomping beginning September 29, is another signature event, which requires The Social Concierge to cover its own costs until ticket sales and sponsorship deals roll in.
“Renting out the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Plaza for two weeks straight is not inexpensive,” Villeneuve said. “Building your own massive tent that 1,200 people can sit in, seating after seating, hiring over 300 staff just for security and bar staff alone, the labour costs of people are the most expensive elements that go into event planning.”
“The realities of fronting hundreds of thousands of dollars in advance is really, really risky,” he added – as is constantly changing venues, as they do with Dîner en Blanc. “The good news is that we’ve never had any flops.”
The Social Concierge isn’t a profit machine, though the events they have created have pulled in a couple of million dollars in ticket sales. Partnerships and sponsors have a hand in the company’s ability to pull off events that consistently grow, year after year. It also allows them to launch new ones.
Next year, for example, the company hopes to host its first pool party at Stanley Park’s Second Beach pool. Originally slated for September of this year, the event would have been the first time in 40 years the Vancouver park board has given a private event access to that particular space. Due to weak ticket sales, however, Oasis – a blend between a Miami beach party and Art Basel – was cancelled and put on the books for 2017.
Looking forward, The Social Concierge, which now operates in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto, is considering expansion to other cities, and possibly into other realms besides event planning.
“Our gross margins – any businessman who’s worth anything would look at those margins and laugh us out of his office, but of course we don’t do this for the ultimate profit,” Kallman said. “We do it because we’re interested in the creativity, we’re interested in the belonging and the other things that are produced through those experiences.” •
