Festival Evolution: FestEvo App

     With festival season approaching fast, we’re all in a scramble to find out what festivals we’re going to attend and who of our friends are going too. Well ease your mind and scramble no more, we’ve found the perfect app to assist you during festival season. Our dear friend, Tucker Gumber, and his team of dreamers have a passion for festivals and they are in pursuit of developing and funding an app called FestEvo.

Tucker’s quest of FestEvo spawned from spending the last three years of his life reviewing festivals from his website: www.TheFestivalGuy.com. His ultimate goal from the start was to find ways to improve the festival experience. His idea was to go to as many festivals as possible with the belief that eventually an idea to improve them would soon come into fruition.

Suddenly, the idea came to him after attending South By South West. After returning home and catching up with friends on Facebook, Tucker saw pictures being posted from many of his friends that had attended SXSW as well.  Missing the opportunity to connect with his friends because he didn’t know that they were attending the same festival, Tucker realized that festivals would be improved if everyone knew which of their friends were going to each festival ahead of time.  So he created a mobile app and website to diminish this problem, and he continuously added new features through the concept of “wouldn’t it be cool if…”

FestEvo makes sure you always have people to go to festivals with by showing you which of your friends are going (or want to go) to each festival. FestEvo makes it easier to know the entire lineup by giving you access to every festival lineup and letting you listen to each artist via Spotify and SoundCloud. The more artists you know, the more fun you will have. FestEvo also helps the festivals improve by having the users fill out surveys so they get real data on ways the festival can improve. 

The biggest feature in FestEvo is the Camp feature. Every member is encouraged to create a “Camp” with the people who they are going to the festival with. Having everyone in a group chat leading up to the festival will help everyone get to know each other leading up to the event. FestEvo will also work with the camp creators to encourage its members to stop bringing trash (plastic water bottles, glow sticks) to the festival and pick up their campsite once the festival ends. 

Fast-forward 10 months and FestEvo has everything you need to prepare for your favorite festival. The only thing FestEvo is missing is the funds to fully develop the application, so they need your help! They only have a few days left in the campaign to raise funds and you get awesome festival gear, tools, and accessories for your donations! You can help make FestEvo possible by donating and sharing this campaign with your friends!

Sharing is caring and caring is love, so show some love to FestEvo! Become a part of something much larger than the individual and change the festival going experience forever! And for that, we would salute You!

Check out the video below to learn more about the Festival Evolution!

The Trunk Nashville: Pop-Up Shop

     When we first began our pursuit of establishing The Yacht Club Clothing Company, we had a vision that we would be able to bring fashion and entertainment from place to place. Our online store has allowed us the ability to reach a worldwide market with the potential opportunity of owning a brick-and-mortar location in the future. In the meantime, we wanted to build a trailer or truck that would allow us to open shop at events and a street corner near you. Well we made friends with The Trunk, which operates Nashville’s first fashion truck as well as a boutique located in East Nashville.

Abigail Franklin, an aspiring entrepreneur that has spent decades styling male performers including Bon Jovi, Prince, and members of Creed, started The Trunk to bring products to you versus waiting for you to come shop. We first spotted The Trunk truck among food trucks at an event, and we instantly fell in love with the concept of the fashion truck. After all, if you can sell gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches and hip-hop inspired wraps from a converted service truck, then why not clothing and jewelry?

We sent her an email to let her know how much we admired her passion; suddenly, it sparked this partner-ship between our brands. In our attempt to bring fashion from place to place, The Trunk Truck & Boutique became the first retail location to carry The Yacht Club brand in Nashville. That’s not all…

In our effort to keep overhead costs low, we are constantly working on ways to bring our merchandise to you without the commitment of a storefront lease. So, The Trunk is emptying their store to set up shop at the Fashion for a Fraction event, and they are graciously allowing us to have a 2-day pop-up shop at their location.

We’ll be hosting the pop-up shop this weekend, Jan. 25^th & 26^th, located at The Shoppes on Fatherland. We’ll be showcasing new and exclusive merchandise with store discounts, food, music, and beverages.

Come fellow-ship with us as we celebrate Music, Art, Fashion & Action.

Gregory, S. (2009). Pop-Up Shops. Time, 174(21), 71.

Matthews, D. (2013). Go west, young man. Roads & Bridges, 51(6), 82.

McMAHON, T. (2012). Pop-up goes the shop. Maclean's, 125(18), 46-47.

Turn Down Tuesdays

     In a social culture where we frequently use the phrase “Turn Up”, we are constantly asking ourselves, “Turn down for what?” Suddenly, we found the perfect excuse to not turn up, yet turn down on Tuesdays. From the creative minds behind Strooly & Full Circle Presents, Turn Down Tuesdays is a new weekly series to showcase the very best in comptemporary bass music.

     Located at William Collier’s in the historic Marathon Village of Nashville, Turn Down will feature a variety of guest tastemakers playing the highest quality House, Garage, UK Funky, Hip Hop, Techno, Club, and overall ‘Turn Down’ oriented music.

      Each week the resident host, Strooly, will be joined by a variety of carefully selected guests to 'Turn Down’ a notch. The night opens with the first hour from 6-7pm with 2-for-1 drinks complimented by a featured guest mix. After the first hour, Strooly serves up a solid hour of the Fresh Vibes of the week, followed by a live exclusive mix and Q&A session with the special guest.

     The series began this past Tuesday with the first featured guest as Hustle Up, also known by his higher energy touring DJ moniker, White Noise. You can download and stream the live mix and subscribe to the Turn Down podcast series at Future-Everything.

     Next week, the featured guest will be TREEKEEPER. So join us on Tuesday nights as we celebrate this new wave, and fellow-ship with like-minded individuals and appreciate the ‘quieter’ things in life. Until then, turn down with the featured mixes below!

Turn Down Vol. 1 – Featured Mix – W8 / Cold Fresh Pillows

Turn Down Vol. 1 – Fresh Vibes Playlist

The Future of Artist Revenue Streams

     As we pursue our dreams in this Digital Age, the Internet has equipped artists of all kind with the power to accomplish their career goals in Music, Art, Fashion, and Action. Crow-funding sites like KickStarter provide emerging artists the opportunity to acquire the funds necessary to fuel their passion and develop their craft. Corporate company cast-offs focus beyond brick-and-mortar and open up shops on Storenvy, Etsy, Shopify, and Big Cartel. Also, the torrent of streaming music services has erupted, with Spotify and Pandora creating a digital distribution platform for musicians and entertainers. Although there are many options for sourcing revenue, The Yacht Club Company specializes in providing quality artist merchandise as a fundamental tool in establishing a brand and growing your network.

     Listeners have flocked to this easy abundance of an all-you-can-eat model for music, but many musicians have been far less enthusiastic. According to Billboard and Canadian Business, a musician penned a frustrated screed noting that his BMI Royalty check showed that three song writers received 21 cents for 7,800 plays on Pandora and $1.05 for 5,960 plays on Spotify. That works out to per-stream royalties of $0.000027 and $0.0000176, respectively (Peoples, 2012). So for a small monthly fee or the occasional annoyance of advertisements, music lovers have access to a vast collective record library, which most likely includes your favorite artist. Forcing artists to rely less on record sales and focus more on building a brand and revenue stream through artist merchandising.

     As CD sales continue to decline, music merchandise is becoming an increasingly essential piece of artists’ revenues. According to Rolling Stones, Arena headliners like Tom Petty and Mötley Crüe get multimillion-dollar advances for signing deals with merchandising and apparel companies to manufacture their items. Concert tees, especially black ones, remain the best-selling products for artists (Hiatt, 2006).

     We have had the unique opportunity to create artist merchandise for several local artists, including Ariel Hill, Laura Reed, Alex Saad, KDSML, SOSA, White Noise, and many more. We are committed to providing excellent quality in all that we do while maintaining our environmental integrity throughout our screen-printing process. In our effort to bring people together to experience something so much greater than the individual, we encourage artists to create a tangible asset to their music and build a brand through artist merchandise.

Feel free to visit our website to learn more about our company and mission to impact the world through Music, Art, Fashion, and Action. If interested in artist merchandising or apparel printing, please contact us at ContactUs@TheYachtClubCo.com.  

Barmak, S. (2013). Can't stop the music. Canadian Business, 86(1/2), 67.

Christman, E. (2013). Pandora's Bigger Slice. Billboard, 125(26), 4-6.

Hiatt, B., & Knopper, S. (2006). The Big Business of Rock Tees. Rolling Stone, (996), 10.

Peoples, G. (2012). The Myth Of The Penny Pinchers. Billboard, 124(44), 10.