Easol, the leading experience commerce technology company, launched by former festival founders, Lisa and Ben Simpson in 2017, is announcing the launch of a new all-in-one festival toolkit that they claim will transform the ability of festival organisers to run profitable festivals and deliver a gold-standard customer experience. Easol will be bringing together festival organisers from around the world at its online Showcase event to dive into the challenges facing the industry today and how the new toolkit can help to tackle these and create new opportunities to future proof their festival business.
The go on to say that Festival organisers are facing a perfect storm this season, with increasing costs within the supply chain, loss of labour due to the pandemic, a saturated market due to two years of covid postponements, low consumer confidence and a cost of living crisis affecting new sales. This extremely challenging environment is compounded for festival organisers who have been forced until now to use multiple websites and systems to manage their customer booking journey and payments leading to increased fees, loss of data and a loss of control over the customer experience.
Following Easol’s successful Series A funding round of $25m in 2021, it is launching its new all-in-one toolkit to tackle all of these issues, delivering a new type of ‘Experience Commerce’ for festival organisers. The new toolkit enables festivals organisers to manage everything they need for their business including:
- Keep 100% of their booking fees – On Easol, festival organisers have the ability to manage and keep 100% of their booking fees allowing them to make more revenue. Organisers can decide whether or not to charge a booking fee at all, and they can have full control over the amount that is charged as opposed to traditional ticketing vendors controlling this and the fees going directly to the vendor.
- Build their brand – Easol delivers fully customisable website design tools which means that the look and feel of the festival website and booking journey can be tailored to be exactly as the festival organisers want it to be. It enables organisers to customise the way they sell everything on their own website from tickets, accommodations, packages, upgrades and more.
- Own their data to track customers – The Easol platform integrates booking and payment options directly onto a festival’s website – so customers are able to book and pay all on their own domain – they do not get redirected to an external ticketing platform to complete their booking. This means that not only is the booking experience highly streamlined for the customer, all the data associated with each booking remains with the festival organiser (not the third party ticketing vendor) allowing them to track and retarget their customers more effectively.
- Get paid instantly – Cashflow is a real challenge for festival organisers, as ticketing vendors hold on to the cash from sales with prohibitive payout terms. Festival organisers that work with Easol receive weekly payouts, so they can access their capital on a more frequent basis, which has always been a huge challenge with traditional ticketing platforms
Ben Simpson, Co-Founder and CEO of Easol said: “It is amazing to see festivals up and running again but as festival organisers ourselves, we know that they are facing an uphill battle by using outdated technology that erodes the control they have over their business. A quick glance at the pages of poor customer reviews of ticketing platforms provides a perfect example of how things can go wrong when you are forced to rely on a traditional ticketing platform to manage your booking and payments journey as well as the inability to track your customers and data – critical for festival promoters selling tickets. Festival organisers need full ownership of their data, brand experience and their customers to avoid this.
Access to capital is also a critical area that needs addressing in the festival industry. With Easol we feel passionately that festival organisers should have a simpler and fairer way to access funding when they need it. This is an area we are excited to continue to develop – watch this space for more to come on this next year!”
Benjamin Sasse, Co-Founder of Meadows in the Mountains commented: “Prior to Easol, the processes were so fragmented, and we had little control over our brand and customer journey. It was amazing to able to bring Meadows back this year after two years of postponements and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support of Easol.”
The costs to run a festival have pretty much doubled since the pandemic so it is more important than ever that we have a partner such as Easol to help us increase revenue so we can tackle these challenges. From the support, the website building experience – just everything – the team are incredible and we trust that they are working with us as a partner to truly help us grow. We have sold more tickets, accommodation options and extra experiences, and as a result achieved significantly more revenue with Easol than any other platform in the 10 year history of our festival.”
The Easol Showcase – Festivals edition event will be taking place at 5pm UTC on 22nd September and will be an opportunity for festival organisers, creators and promoters to come together and explore the new way to sell festivals. For more information: https://easol.com/showcase/showcase-festivals-edition