1) Who are you guys and what do you do? Outfit Events is a professional nightlife promotions and events company that believes in giving our business partners the opportunity to manifest their creative talents into serving the patrons at our events with great entertainment and a sense of connection and community. The direction of the company is managed by Bob, Joey, and Dante, but our overall evolv
ing product and brand has been culmination and collaboration of the efforts of many others as well along the way. Outfit Events began as a simple way to provide our close friends a meeting place to get together at some of Chicago’s best nightlife spots with perks that they could not normally get on nights when we were not hosting an event. We realized that going to a club or a high end lounge can be an intimidating experience so we sought out to bring the neighborhood bar feel to the downtown nightlife scene. We essentially wanted to create something like Cheers in a setting of exclusive crowds, music, and venues. We also wanted to make sure that if we invited our friends out to an event, that we offering them something so we collaborated with the club to offer a private guest list that allowed them access to Chicago’s best venues, drink specials, and most importantly an assurance that many of their friends were going to be there along with many others who were a fit with our group. We still hold true to our original ideals, we just have added even more perks like the best DJs in the country, regular celebrity appearances and performances, and many more friends who have joined us along the way.
2) What made you make the jump into promoting? Bob had been hosting events throughout the years for his friends, and had several successful new year’s eve events like 2004 at Can’s on Damen, 2005 at Rockit Bar and Grill, and 2006 at Enclave. At his new year’s eve party in 2006 at Enclave, Joey approached Bob and told him that he would love to host an event with him at some point. Bob was currently just establishing his attorney and title services company (Legal Runners, Inc legalrunnersinc.com) along with his real estate company (DeKoven Street Realty dekovenstreetrealty.com) so he did not really put much thought into it but remembered the conversation. In May of that year, some friends of Bob started harassing him to throw another event, so Bob called up Joey and asked him if he wanted to co-host the event with him. Joey was excited about the possibility and in May of that year Bob and Joey hosted their first event together at Level on Rush Street. Their first event together as Joey describes it, “There was such an energy and enthusiasm from my friends and it was such a hugely successful party that I just knew it was the start of something big.” At the first event, as Bob remembers with a laugh “Joey introduced me to his friend Dante, and Dante went on and on in his thick East Coast accent about how he was a DJ back home in New York and Boston and wanted to break into the club scene downtown and wanted to host an event with us. After I carefully listened through the music and translated all of his East Coast jumble into my version of English (Bob said as he was laughing aloud), I realized that he was passionate about his craft and Joey and I decided to let him DJ at one of our events. Later on that month, Joey and Bob decided that they wanted to host another event, and Joey reminded Bob about Dante who wanted to DJ at one of our events. Joey and Bob approached Enclave and asked them if they would be willing to let them host an event there on a Friday night with their friend Dante DJing the party. After much reluctance and objection because Matt (the GM of Enclave) had never heard Dante spin, Matt agreed only to let Dante spin downstairs but refused to let him spin upstairs for the much larger party. As Joey remembers, “Dante himself had about 250 people show up to the party and people were smashed in downstairs beyond capacity and he worked the crowd like it was a rock concert. His style of hip-hop, rock, electro, and house mash-ups was in tune with our crowd and our friends demanded that we never host an event again without Dante DJing.”
Matt informed Bob and Joey that they had set an all time attendance record for the club at the event, and he was very much impressed with Dante’s talents. That was the final confirmation that they needed and Bob, Joey, and Dante decided that hosting events together was going to be a more regular occurrence. After several months of consecutive events with record turnouts, Joey decided to retire from his union electrician job, Dante quit his job as a law clerk, and Bob turned over his attorney and title services company to his partner, and they began to host events on a full time basis.
3) How have you made an impact on Chicago’s nightlife scene? We have made an impact on the nightlife scene by truly making this an art and profession. We started analyzing what create great vibes at events, what was pleasing to the crowd, and how we could bring people together from different professions, schools, neighborhoods, etc and make it all come together into one cohesive and flowing event. We also decided that we need to up the ante at events in Chicago by going the extra mile for our crowd by never hosting an event with bad music and going out of our way to bring the best talent in entertainment to our events. Along with the best DJ in Chicago and emerging national talent, Dante the Don spinning at our events, we looked nationwide at the best DJ talent in the country, and began to bring in talent like DJ AM, DJ Spider, DJ Scene, DJ Kevin Scott, DJ Fashen, DJ Homicide, amongst others and got some of the best entertainment talent in the country to perform live at our events like Wyclef, Lil Jon, Gym Class Heroes, Hurricane Chris, and Common. That mixed with Chicago’s best crowds and regular celebrity appearances like Adrian Grenier, George Lopez, and Vida Guerra to name a few along with our very own celebrity sports host athlete, Ozzie Guillen Jr. bringing every professional athlete in town out to our events has made for a very successful formula.
4) What are your upcoming events for May? We will be celebrating our two-year anniversary in May and we plan on upping the ante even more with some ground breaking events. The details are still in the works and still under wraps, but check out www.outfitevents.com in late April for more information.
5) Where are you guys headed in the future? We live by the saying that “if you want to give God a good laugh, say where you think you are going to be in five years.” We have some directions and some possibilities of what we want to do with our company, but we are letting our company take on a life of its own at this point and letting fate and circumstances lead us in whatever direction it takes us. There are a lot of social and economic circumstances in play right now that are a lot bigger than us that have to be carefully considered and adjusted for before we make any definite future plans.
6) Any plans to promote anything else besides events at nightclubs? We are very interested in promoting any brand or brands that tie into our vision of Chicago and the nightlife and social scene in general. We are currently working on quite a few possibilities for events outside of nightclubs, and we are currently in talks with several brands who are looking to make an impact in the young professional social scene.
7) What would you say is your most memorable event? New Year’s Eve 2008 was definitely the most memorable and the most successful. We simultaneously rented out and hosted New Year’s Eve events at Enclave, Manor, Rino, Stone Lotus, and Stay. We successfully sold out all five events, and all five events went off 100% smooth. It was a humungous undertaking and months of hard work, but in the end it was one of the defining moments of our character and business and well worth the stress and efforts because we delivered a very well received product to our crowd.
8) What do you think is the most valuable tool for a promoter? We have built a huge network of over 70,000 contacts at this point and we were probably the first promoters in the country to use MySpace and Facebook to promote our events in grand scale because those sites allowed us to be very selective about our crowd because we could see and read about people in their own words. In the end though, it all does not add up to much if you cannot consistently earn the trust and respect of the crowd that comes out to your events by putting together something impacting and memorable.
9) What separates you from your competitors? In the nightlife business, ego tends to drive people more than worrying about the details, the party, and the product, so we really strive to keep our collective ego under wraps and work together with all of our business partners to create a collective vision which is sometimes a directive and sometimes a compromise. “We try to not leave a single detail unexamined from the music, to the staff, to the flow of the night, and just try to give people everything they want out of a night out from the minute that they walk in the door until the minute they stumble out” says Dante laughing out loud. If all of the people working behind the scenes and at the events are on the same page, it creates a vibe that really comes through to the crowd and aids in their enjoyment of our events.
10) Advice for others who want to get into promoting? Your crowd becomes a reflection of the vibe and party you create. Figure out who your targeted audience is and try to create something that appeals to what they want out of a night. Most importantly, respect what it means to be a good host and do not get involved with anything that compromises that position as an ambassador of your brand and your event.
Outfit Events is your industry insider for all things nightlife with an emphasis on Chicago! Check out the stories, mixes, and parties you need to be up on!
