Where the man in the street can hold a gig
EventNook
Peatix
IF you're the organiser of a small concert for about 100 people, it might not be commercially viable to sell tickets through a giant ticketing agent like Sistic. Hence, smaller companies have been popping up to try and fill the gap for niche event organisers who don't have the volume to list their shows on Sistic.
One of these is EventNook, which was started by Singapore PR Kyaw Lin Oo who used to be a software engineer. In early 2011, he thought of the idea for EventNook, when one of his customers requested for software that would help with event planning and guest registration.
"They said they needed a good registration software to collect guest information because they previously screwed up their events over this," explains the Myanmar-born 36-year-old.
So that was when he started developing a software that eventually materialised into EventNook - a website which acts as a platform for the man in the street to easily set up an event website, collect guest registration details, disseminate information to attendees, and even sell tickets.
"We are like Sistic, but for smaller events. Say if you want about 100 people in a cafe or bar, Sistic won't be suitable because it charges things like administration fee, and creating or launching the event takes some time," explains Mr Kyaw.
EventNook went 'live' just last year, and for now, there's no charge for creating an event on the page if it is free. If the event is ticketed, then EventNook takes a cut of 2.5 per cent of ticket sales plus 30 cents per attendee, not including transaction fees. Right now, they have about 50 events happening concurrently every day, and Mr Kyaw says this number is consistently increasing.
Their events can range from small concerts at bars, private birthday parties, or even corporate dinners where additional guests and individual dietary information is has to be collected. In fact, that is one function that sets EventNook apart from its competitors, and is in line with their focus which is more on making the registration and ticket-buying process easier - organisers can customise registration forms to collect specific relevant information they need from guests.
This vision is a little different from that of their competitor - Japanese company Peatix - which wants to create a holistic mobile solution for event organisers from the planning phase all the way to the execution stage. Peatix was set up in Tokyo in 2011 by four partners, but it onlzy launched officially in Singapore last year. Right now, it has over 200 events going on in Singapore at any one time.
Says one of Peatix's co-founders, Emi Takemura: "We come from Amazon.com so we've been trained in the e-commerce space for quite some time, and we wanted a way to support the creative industry so we felt event space is great for that."
"Everybody in creative space needs to do events to get attention or make ends meet and we would like to make the technology accessible so that anyone with great ideas can run events without having to worry about how to build a webpage," adds Ms Takemura.
Their web-based platform performs similar functions to that of EventNook, except that they also have an app that allows the event organisers to control certain aspects of their event directly from their smartphone.
They too do not charge for use of their platform to organise free events, but instead take a cut of 2.9 per cent of ticket sales plus 99 cents per attendee for ticketed events, inclusive of all transaction fees.
According to Ms Takemura, the company is currently focusing on mobile technology, and hopes to improve their app to make the event-planning a seamless process that can easily be carried out by any layman via a smartphone or tablet. She says: "We haven't scratched the surface of what we can do. We haven't really pushed the envelope in terms of being able to completely run events on mobile phones or tablets yet, so we're working on that. We want eventually for people to want to come to Peatix to create pages, get connected with other organisers, or even source for ideas and inspiration."
Share with us your feedback on BT's products and services
