So any logical person looking at the events industry at the moment would probably see an industry that is still trying to recover from the pandemic. An industry that is becoming ever more regulated with new legislation such as Martyn’s Law coming into effect next year, and an industry that is frankly under the boot heel of this terrible Labour Chancellor, Rachel Reive.
Not really the sort of environment to start a venture, but where there is a problem that needs to be solved; you can find the most amazing opportunities to make money.
Alex and I have many clients in the event sector. With Yazaroo I provide website and marketing solutions, while Alex, with Convergence focused on Connectivity and tech for live events. We have many mutual clients and found they all had the same problem: Money.
Whats the problem?
The main issue facing the events sector is money, or lack of it. The costs of Rachel Reive’s increase in minimum wage, employers contributions, ever increasing business rates, duty on drinks (various) and more besides, mean that venues and events organisers are working smaller and smaller margins.
This also means that venues and organisers operate on a rotating staff model, where they hire for busy periods only, which makes continuity a really big issue.
Most venues and events organisations are run with their data and systems siloed, that is, with everything in different places not talking to each other.
Tickets are often sold in Eventbright, email addresses are in Mailchimp, corrispondence is in Gmail, and so on. This makes organisation long winded and costly. Not just in man-power, but in subscription cost, which by-the-way you need to pay all year round regardless of if you are actually using the software.
Then we get onto the cost of this software – Mailchimp is approx. £90/month, Eventbright charges nearly 7% plus 59p per ticket plus listing fees, plus they only pay out after the event has happened.
In short, what a fucking mess. Being squeezed every which way. But where others see problems, we saw an opportunity to not only make money but actually help people make money themselves at the same time.
The Solution
We created Comus as a compleate solution for event organisers and venues. A platform that is free to use, with a fee-per-ticket model. Just a flat 3% on ticket sales with weekly payouts, because lower fees and cashflow are a lifeline to any business, not just events businesses.
This alone has sparked a lot of interest from event organisers, like the Guildford Beer Festival and Godalming Fireworks who have boath used Comus to great success.
A UK based cheaper Eventbright alternative is essentially the pitch, but in time as we build it out, a compleat suit of tools to run venues and events all in one place.
Basically we want to use tech to streamline, simplify and cut cost. This is a huge help for businesses that are being squeezed everywhere. What we have found is that making the platform as cheap as possible more people wnat to use it.
We are both making money and helping the events indstry becombe more proffitable. In tern we hope that will result in more events and more ticket sales.
But its not just the events industry, we have offered this for free to charities. Any registered charity can use Comus for free like roundtable events and charity fun runs.
So that’s why we built Comus, we saw an opportunity to do some good, and make some money while we did it.
