Inside peek into the making of the first ever Virtual
House of Beauty
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LIRON DA What Starts on the Dance Floor Stays on the Dance Floor Inside the Crazy Beginnings of Eventique Eventique was born on the dance floors of the hottest nightclubs in New York City — literally. Back in 2001, those were my favorite places to be. I paid my way through college by slinging deli sandwiches at Boston’s only real kosher deli during the day and DJing until 2 a.m. every night. When I wasn’t in the DJ booth, I was soaking up the vibe at the club with a cocktail in my hand. That’s where I met one of my first employees.
She was smart, corporate, and working as a director at IBM. Shouting over the music, I told her about my plans to take my DJing side hustle to the next level. I’d entertained kids at bat mitzvahs and blasted “Pour Some Sugar On Me” at fraternity parties, but my real dream was to leave the booth and become a corporate event planner.
When I let my imagination wander, I could picture the whole thing: a thriving event company with me at the helm, managing the whole experience. I already had a car so full of cables and speakers that it was basically a roving event suitcase, and I’d found a fellow DJ, Chris, who could cover for me in the booth while I refreshed the food, handled the other entertainment, and kept the ship tight. I just needed a business blueprint. Within minutes, we were coming up with master plans in the middle of the dance floor. The magic of Eventique came to life that night. The dance floor was our conference room — until we realized our clients would probably want someplace to sit! Eventually, we got a real office and our very first intern (a family friend’s daughter who helped me out by answering the phones until I could afford to hire her).
about that on Page 4), and crafted internal marketing sessions for Anheuser-Busch. There were moments when I felt like I couldn’t hack it. Once, I walked into what I thought was just a preliminary meeting at a hotel, and a salesperson met me at the door. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “They’re all waiting for you to present.” “Present what?” I asked. And she said, “Your event pitch! You’re the last one of the day.” I didn’t know anything about the company or the event they wanted, but somehow, I got up on stage in front of a sea of exhausted corporate executives and talked my way into a contract. That company became a 10-year client, and we hosted insane events for them all over the world. In 2010, at a WeWork Summer Camp for 5,000 in the middle of the Adirondacks, I caught myself thinking, “Wow, is this really my life now?” But that only lasted a second before I went back to making the mega glamping festival for startups, entrepreneurs, and executives happen. A lot has changed, but a lot has stayed the same, too. I’d still rather be on the dance floor than in a boardroom. There’s no feeling in the world like being on-site at an event with my team. The laughter, the pumping adrenaline, the aching feet, the mental exhaustion … that’s where I thrive! Every month in this publication, you’ll read stories about those moments. You’ll meet our team, hear from our clients, and learn about event tips and wild, late-night encounters from the experts behind the curtain. Buckle up — it’s going to be a magical ride. - Liron David
CHATTER the box
A Quick Word From Our Clients
AVID In those early days, Chris and I used our DJ connections to slowly build Eventique’s inertia with help from friends and family. When people called looking for great music, we sold them on the whole experience. We plowed through the early 2000s, survived the 2008 financial crisis, and never looked back after that.
“Eventique facilitated our Holiday Appreciation event at Madame Tussauds in Times Square on Tuesday, Dec. 10. While we anticipated about 350 attendees, we had nearly a thousand guests ‘surprise’ us. Eventique reacted accordingly and perfectly accommodated this crowd. “Throughout the planning of this important client event, we found Eventique to be extremely knowledgeable and organized. They literally handled everything from soup to nuts, allowing myself and my team to focus on the attendees. Our clients are our lifeblood, and Eventique understood that. They left nothing unattended. “The venue, the caterer, and the decorator all complimented Eventique for their organized approach to this important event. It was one of the few events we’ve planned, and we plan several every year that went as smoothly as this one, even though we doubled the expected ‘workload’ on them. All I can say to close this post is that Eventique is now our ‘go-to’ for events in the future. Thank you!”
More than 20 years later, it feels crazy to reflect on how far we’ve come since those late nights partying in 2001. Eventique is still a small company. Our core team is just 10 people, but we have a deep pool of “permalancers” including lighting designers, programmers, and video editors; a worldwide network of industry partners; and three offices on three different continents — including our headquarters in New York City and satellites in London and Dubai. We’ve also hosted more than 1,200 events since my mom’s friend first called me up and asked, “Hey, can you DJ my daughter’s bar mitzvah?” (I showed up with two little Sony Discman CD players. Yes, really.) Many of those were in person, but over the last two years, we’ve become experts at immersive, interactive virtual experiences, too. We’ve jammed with Spotify, celebrated Latinx Heritage Month with TikTok, created a House of Beauty with Sephora (read more
Case Study
SEPHORiA Eventique Designs Sephora’s ‘Virtual House of Beauty’ Welcome to It’s 10 a.m. on Sept. 18, 2021. You’re one of the
country’s top beauty influencers, and you’re sitting in front of your computer with swag, makeup, and other beauty products from Sephora covering your desk. They arrived on your doorstep just in time for this moment. You pull up Sephoria2021.com and — holding your breath — enter your login. Then, it happens: The virtual doors open, and you “step” inside a massive digital house. The house is a maze, and every room brings a new experience. In the home theater, you’re immersed in a master class streamed live by a beauty brand in Los Angeles. It’s followed by a panel on mental health in the beauty space sponsored by Selena Gomez’s brand Rare Beauty. In the loft, you follow a portal to a virtual fitting room where you can try on ThirdLove bras. In the family room, backyard, and sunroom, celebrities like Jonathan Van Ness, Helen Phillips, and Patrick Ta appear to share makeup tips and tell you about clean beauty. You spin a fortune wheel to win swag and snap selfies in virtual photo booths. It’s the most fun you’ve ever had without leaving your office chair. You’ve just journeyed through SEPHORiA: Virtual House of Beauty, a one-of-a-kind virtual event created by Eventique for the beauty brand Sephora. According to Amelia Friedman, Eventique’s project manager of the SEPHORiA team, planning and executing the event took nine months. The bidding process began in January 2021. After winning, Friedman’s team embarked on a whirlwind of brainstorming, designing, planning, and networking to make their vision for SEPHORiA a reality by Sept. 18. Along the way, they ran into several challenges that demanded creative and collaborative gymnastics. Chief among them was taking a beloved event that had been hands on and in person and translating it to a virtual space.
“It was a very difficult concept to wrap our heads around, but our incredible creative director really took charge and took the lead on it,” she says. Friedman adds that although the team couldn’t fully replicate the in-person experience of collecting free samples at dozens of booths, shaking hands with other media influencers, and building out gorgeous selfie photo-ops, they could still ensure Sephora met their chief goals: educating attendees about new brands, generating influencer buzz, and highlighting the ethics of clean beauty, diversity, and inclusion. “We really changed the entire event [when we took it virtual]. Coming up with how to do that, make it a positive experience, and stay true to the brand was a challenge.” Once Friedman’s team developed a blueprint, they faced an execution hurdle: creating a registration page that would both give SEPHORiA’s attendees flexible ticket options and stay within the legal guidelines of every U.S. state. Eventique wanted guests to choose between snagging a free ticket or adding one of two $40 gift box options. This flexibility was a serious challenge to the event’s registration software, but Friedman’s team made it happen. The beautifully branded Experience Kits were delivered directly to each influencer’s doorstep, stuffed with swag, samples, and full-sized products from Sephora partners like FENTY BEAUTY by Rihanna.
are so many virtual event types; it’s not just one size fits all. We work with clients to make sure all of their goals are being hit.” SEPHORiA was a massive success. It sold out quickly and hundreds of influencers logged on without a hiccup to explore the Virtual House of Beauty on Sept. 18. They played games, learned from brand ambassadors, tested ThirdLove bras in the virtual fitting room, and even sweat it out in online workouts with obé Fitness. After the event, BizBash named Sephora one of its Industry Innovators of 2022, calling the beauty company one of “10 Brands Shaping the Future of Event Marketing.” The publication also spotlighted SEPHORiA: Virtual House of Beauty as Sephora’s “Most Innovative Event.” Kate Biancamano, the director of event and experiential marketing at Sephora, told BizBash that “Sephora’s event philosophy is to provide thrilling and innovative content and experiences to inspire attendees and remind them that they belong to something beautiful.”
Behind the scenes, though, there was an even trickier aspect to these perks: the sales tax. When mailing out the boxes, Sephora had to charge the buyer tax depending on where they lived, and one misstep could bring a legal battle. “There are over 4,000 different tax zones, and we learned that the hard way,” Friedman jokes. Ultimately, her team devised a clever integration of Sephora’s registration system and credit card processing that fully avoided any legal snags. “Registration software isn’t supposed to do everything in the whole world. We were pushing it beyond the limits of what it was supposed to do and what it was built to do,” she says. With that challenge behind them, the team moved on to filming content, running customer support for the event, sending email blast reminders to attendees, and building out SEPHORiA’s digital space with 3D renderings. Amelia personally managed content filming in both New York and Los Angeles to take as much work as possible off Sephora’s plate and make the event’s execution feel easy. “What Eventique does well is translating a brand’s goals from in- person to virtual and taking it from there,” Friedman says. “There
SEPHORiA did just that.
In fact, Biancamano’s team was so impressed that they’ve already invited Eventique back to plan SEPHORiA 2022. “We’re building out more one-to-one interaction and group interaction in this upcoming event,” Friedman says. Looking back on 2021, she adds, “Creating something that unique was a really big win. People had never really seen anything like it.”
The Musical Mind Behind the Curtain MEET ROCKER ERIC WIELANDER Eventique’s VP of Creative and Strategy “Michael Jackson: 30th Anniversary Celebration” at Madison Square Garden in 2001 — primed him for his big break into event production in 2016: “When the Art Comes Down, Works from the Super 8 Collection” at Openhouse in Manhattan. “When the Art Comes Down” was a stroke of creative genius. Part art show, part comedy special, and part corporate garage sale, the event kicked off the Wyndham Hotels’ remodel of its Super 8 chain in a unique and innovative way. “We asked hotel franchise owners to give us the art they were going to throw away. It was like a tacky art fair — the idea was that we basically thought we had to beg people, ‘Please, take this art from our walls!’ We hired Amy Sederis to be our chief curator. She was on-site at the event to officiate every piece of art and take photos with people. We gave them the art wrapped in Super 8 paper. It was meant to be like a media event to kick off the summer travel season for the brand, and it was a huge hit. That was really my moment. I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is what I really want to do.’” “When the Art Comes Down” was so successful that Eric headed up an encore event in Miami, which caught the eye of Eventique founder Liron David. The two had met before during Eric’s time in PR, and Liron quickly brought him on board at Eventique. Today, Eric manages accounts like UNICEF/UN, TikTok, The Humane Society of the United States, Seramount, and Metapurse/ Dreamverse and also offers creative guidance and direction to the whole Eventique team. He loves hosting focus groups that tap into the whole team’s energy. “The biggest challenge and the thing I love doing most is the creative part. When you hatch a great idea that’s tremendously successful, it’s incredibly rewarding. The challenge is the potential for burnout or running out of ideas,” he says, adding, “... The beauty of working at Eventique is that you never have to shoulder [creative work] entirely on your own.” Eric at a Glance Current Favorite Album: “Dawn FM” by The Weeknd Currently Reading: “The Every” by David Eggers Recent Favorite Movie: “Licorice Pizza” Last Concert Seen: The War on Drugs at Madison Square Garden Relaxation Hack: Skiing off the grid Inspiration Sources: Street art, museums, great films, and incredible books
W hen Eric Wielander was in his 20s, he “I probably went to about four shows a week. I would see a variety of different bands in a variety of different venues, from tiny clubs and bars to arenas,” he recalls. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, those years of dancing to The Chemical Brothers and Nine Inch Nails planted the seeds of his future as Eventique’s Vice President of Creative and Strategy. Eric’s sharp journalist’s mind absorbed the details of every show. was neck-deep in the New York City music scene working as a journalist, editor, andpublisher. “I started to pay more and more attention and geek out on things like what a band’s stage setup looked like or the way bands interacted with their audiences,” he says. “I went from just loving how a certain metal or goth band used a fog machine to later seeing how [others] would use strobe lights, projection, film, and video as part of their performances. I became enamored with the process of how a performance tells a story — visually and sonically — and how an artist engages with an audience.” Back then, Eric says, his passion for event production was “dormant and brewing” under the surface of his career. It wasn’t until he left journalism for a job in public relations that it really flourished. In 1999, Eric worked with producer Keith Kevan on a launch event for A|X Armani Exchange’s flagship store. It was his first real professional venture into event production. At the same time, Eric was planning his wedding and working on the publicity for Woodstock ‘99, the famous Woodstock Music and Art Fair’s 30th anniversary event. Pulling off those two gatherings — as well as the music festivals and other bashes that followed, including the
BRAIN PARTY! I
JUST WRAPPED
Welcome to “Just Wrapped,” a monthly summary of what our team has been up to. Every year, we plan events such as corporate parties, virtual experiences, concerts, and charity galas. This list is just a small peek behind the curtain. WorkWave’s Beyond Service User Conference — This four-day summit expanded WorkWave’s annual 200–300-person user conference to invite a total of 1,000 people to sunny Orlando. The event was packed with more than 80 training and leadership sessions, a tailgate-themed party, and a keynote speech from NFL legend Joe Theismann. Attendees dove into workshops, networked with peers, and enjoyed numerous social events, like a tailgate. eCap Summit 2022 — eCap brought 1,400 bankers, lenders, brokers, and other financial executives together at Trump National Doral Miami to glean market insights from the experts and close deals. The event kicked off with a “Welcome to New York”- themed reception, then attendees spent three days golfing, networking, and crafting the country’s financial future. Hair Food Media Event With Hana Bronfman — This virtual media event for clean beauty brand Hair Food — which Eventique designed in conjunction with LaForce — featured a talk with HBFIT founder Hana Bronfman about Hair Food’s newest product. Meridian Capital Group’s Annual Luncheon at the MBA CREF conference at the Manchester Grand Hyatt — This year’s luncheon was themed around the trendy metaverse and named “MetaMeridian” in which Meridian Capital Group’s lenders help make up a multitude of success stories in cities all across the country. Inventor and filmmaker, Mick Ebeling, delivered a moving keynote about his vision and concepts. Want your upcoming event to be next on our list? Request a proposal from our all-star team at Eventique.com. 4 EventsWe’ve Checked OffOur To-Do List
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Eventique just received a Biz Bash Event Experience Award for Best Virtual Team Building Activity for its production of TikTok’s Summer Wrap Party event
VIRTUAL ESCAPE ROOMS — ARE THEY WORTH TRYING? The Scoop on a Hot Trend In Virtual Team Building
Virtual escape rooms also promote creativity and help your group bond while working toward a shared purpose. This closeness is a huge benefit whether you’re meeting up with old friends or building cohesion on a remote team. Plus, it’s much harder to pass up a quest than a meeting. Virtual escape rooms can come at a high cost and include time limits, but we think the pros outweigh the cons. Sure, your family might not want to pay $1,500 for TeamBonding’s Sherlock Holmes Murder Mystery Escape Room, but because it can accommodate 20-1,000 people, it might be ideal for a company party. Smaller groups have other options, like Secret City Adventures’ rooms, starting at just $15 per person. To find the right quest for you, check out the companies mentioned along with Wildly Different, The Escape Game, Teambonders, and Interactive Entertainment Group.
Standard Zoom calls are the height of boring — but what if you could turn your next meeting or happy hour into a bank heist, hostage rescue mission, or Sherlock Holmes
mystery? That’s exactly the promise of virtual escape rooms, one of the hottest trends for remote workers.
According to The Guardian, the real-life escape room craze of 2018 and 2019 was rooted in Dungeon & Dragons, British TV shows, and lo-fi Japanese video games — in other words: our collective love of puzzles, challenges, and nostalgia. Now, virtual escape rooms are riding that same wave to popularity. Virtual escape rooms have plenty of perks. For one thing, they give your virtual meeting a sense of place. You may not be at your favorite bar or around the table of a conference room, but you are somewhere rather than floating in Zoomland. (This is key — turn to Page 4 to see a creative way our team created a virtual space for Sephora.)
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