Matt Costa and Brian Alper know how to throw a party. In fact, they’ve turned parties into a $15 million yearly business.
Costa and Alper own Irvine-based Beyond Marketing Group, which puts on promotional events for automakers and others looking to tap young consumers. The company puts on product launch parties, giveaways, concerts and art shows.
Clients include Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. in Torrance, Harley David-son Inc. of Milwaukee and XM Satellite Radio Inc. in Washington, D.C.
Beyond Marketing taps other companies for custom banners, T-shirts and decorations.
It hosts events and parties in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta and Austin, Texas.
Others doing the same sort of thing include Wisconsin’s GMR Marketing LLC and Vermont’s Fuse LLC. Sometimes Beyond Marketing works with other marketers to put on events, Costa and Alper said.
The company runs out of a 25,000-square-foot building, which includes offices and a warehouse. It shares additional warehouse space in Irvine.
Beyond Marketing employs 17 full-time workers and hires up to 250 part-time workers for events and promotions.
Before starting the company in 2003, Alper co-owned raveworld.net, an online music site. He also produced electronic music festivals.
Costa worked at the Los Angeles office of New York-based TBWA/Chiat/Day. They met after they helped produce an electronic music tour for Universal City-based USA Films.
During the music tour, Costa and Alpa found they worked well together. They decided to start their own business. They said they faced the usual challenges of limited money and time.
Alper and Costa said they relied on connections made before starting their business. Their ties led them to their first customer, Toyota’s Scion.
“We worked with Scion on and off in the past before we started this company and having them as our first client was a really big break for us,” Costa said.
Beyond Marketing was contracted to do a majority of the auto brand’s youth marketing, including putting on lowbrow art shows at the Culver City-based Scion Installation L.A. art gallery.
“We’re always trying to be unique but it’s challenging and very competitive,” Alper said.
A good chunk of the company’s clients were referred to Beyond Marketing, according to the partners. The company also pitches ideas to potential customers, they said.
Web Wiz
Some high school students have part-time jobs. Neil Patel started his own business that now does $4 million in yearly sales.
Patel is founder of Advantage Consulting Services, an Irvine-based Internet marketing company. The company is hired to boost visitors to Web sites.
The goal is to up a site’s ranking in searches done on Yahoo and Google. Advantage Consulting redesigns Web sites so that they’re easier to navigate and to buy from, Patel said.
The company also creates profiles for companies on MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia.
Patel started Advantage Consulting with his brother-in-law and sister in 2003. He started soliciting his Internet marketing services when he was 16. He’s now a 22-year-old marketing major at California State University, Fullerton.
Patel said he learned about Internet marketing when he was in high school. Growing up in La Palma, he loved computers and surfing the Internet.
He wanted to build a Web site for fun but needed money to do it. So he said he started picking up trash and cleaning bathrooms at Knott’s Berry Farm.
Patel also said he started taking speech classes at Cypress College because he wanted to learn how to become a better speaker.
At a speech class, he met an Internet marketing consultant who helped him think about his future in the Internet marketing business, Patel said.
Patel started making cold calls to different companies that advertised their Web sites on Internet search engines. His strategy was to call companies and estimate how much they were spending on pay-per-click advertising, he said.
Some of his first clients were computer and mortgage companies, he said. Patel’s brother-in-law Hiten Shah and sister Amee Shah helped develop the business from there.
Patel now juggles college, work and conferences. He said he goes to about 24 conferences a year and speaks at some of them.
Sometimes customers are turned off by Patel’s age, he said.
“Every once in awhile you’ll get people saying ‘he’s too young to do the job,'” he said. “But a majority of the people that I encounter are proud of me. The Internet marketing industry is so young anyway and I think more people are realizing that.”
Golf Buff
Golf Gym LLC of Santa Ana does about $1 million a year selling exercise gear and workout DVDs for golfers.
The products are sold at some 200 golf stores around the U.S and Canada. The company employs six people.
Golf Gym has its own GolfGym Power Swing Trainer and other products made in Asia. The company runs out of a 25,000-square-foot building.
Workout DVDs are made with Katherine Roberts, founder of Katherine Roberts Yoga for Golfers and co-host of the Golf Channel’s Makeover Challenge.
Ken and Vicki Pierce started Golf Gym in 1987, when golf fitness was an oxymoron, they said.
“We were ahead of our time,” Ken Pierce said. “But now with golfers like Tiger Woods, people are realizing that training is important for the sport.”
The company’s products target muscle strength, flexibility and balance, which are crucial to the sport, Pierce said.
