My Event Full Life is your chance to take a peek inside the lives of the honourees of 91制片厂鈥檚 inaugural as they share the secrets behind their success. What lessons have these seasoned organisers learned along the way? What advice has been the most valuable? And what keeps them up at night? Get ready to be inspired.
has been putting founder and director Chris Bausor鈥檚 home city of Perth, Australia, on the map as an exciting place to live and play since 2013.
Specialising in music festivals and parties, one of Bar Pop鈥檚 flagship brands is the annual carnival weekend Froth Town. Creating 鈥済ood times on tap鈥�, it鈥檚 a celebration of Australian craft beer, booze, and food, with live music from world-famous acts, and quirky activities like wrestling, hot dog eating contests, and Dad Bod Wet T-shirt competitions.
Here, Chris reflects on his journey, revealing how 鈥渟tarting from the bottom鈥� in the events industry was pivotal in shaping his approach to running his own company鈥�
I used to annoy my friends to run bars at music festivals. I started working as I was finishing my uni degree running full marquee bars. It was a lot of fun! Once I finished uni, I thought maybe I could do it as a proper job. I started picking up more and more work and that transitioned into, 鈥淲ell, why don’t I do my own event?鈥�. I’d seen a fair bit of the ins and outs, so thought, 鈥淟et’s give it a crack!鈥�
Starting at the bottom was the greatest learning curve. I remember having more senior people around me and listening to the way they interacted with people. I saw some really good examples and some really poor examples of how to treat people, and basic levels of respect. With our events now, we treat people how we would like to be treated.
Events is a funny industry 鈥� there are so many different layers. There are people stocking fridges and people moving cables around, but then there are high-profile musicians, and there is a huge disparity in where people come from, their environment, and their stage of life. It’s really interesting to see how different people interact with each other.
Our joy comes from seeing a live mass gathering. We experience it through our own events as well as attending other events 鈥� like major sporting events or big concerts 鈥� and I think there’s something really special about being a part of something bigger. And when you’ve played a part in organising it, then it’s a different feeling altogether.
In years gone by, my proudest achievement was all about scale 鈥� but that鈥檚 changed. We started on a really small scale and at a steady pace, doing events for 200 people, then 300, and 500, then 1,000. I was so proud of successfully delivering an event for a larger amount of people each time. But now, having transitioned through the difficult challenge of having a business that can’t operate during Covid, it’s all about the pride of recovery, resilience, and finding a way through that.
It was an extreme challenge to put the boots on again. We went through those periods where we continued to create, continued to employ, and then had to ultimately refund everything. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, and if we had our time again, we would have probably downed tools and gone into a complete period of sedation. But we can’t really change that, so now we just look to the future. Obviously, there are economic constraints that people are experiencing now, but I think the desire to be part of something live 鈥� even as technology improves 鈥� is still there.
I’m most excited to grow again outside of Perth. I feel like Froth Town and Ice Cream Factory both have a special place in Perth鈥檚 event landscape, and I want to see if we can deliver the same experience for more and more people.
Each event has a different set of requirements in terms of demographics, noise impact on surroundings, and weather, so that will determine where we choose 鈥� we did actually expand to Melbourne and Brisbane, but we couldn’t deliver those due to lockdowns. But my goal is to go somewhere like London. That’s a lofty target, but I think it would be really well received for an Australian brand to get over there and really market ourselves as an Australian product.
