Located in Florida at the southernmost point of the United States, the island city of Key West features watersports, beautiful beaches, a colourful nightlife, author Ernest Hemingway’s colonial-style house — and for Mako Moco, it’s also the perfect place to host a festival.
“This town was built for events,” says Kyle Carter, Managing Partner. “Key West is an incredibly unique island with all the facilities and infrastructure capable of taking three, four, five thousand people every single day — and that’s what we do, three weeks in a row. For a music festival producer and promoter, it's a real dream come true.”
Mako Moco started with one festival and has grown to represent and produce many more including RokIsland Fest, Mile 0 Fest and Key Western. Each festival spotlights different music genres, from classic country to 80’s and 90’s glam rock, but they all seek to highlight the beauty of the location, with visitors to the island taking in everything from boat parties through to prepared meals. As Alyssa Berger, a native of the island and also a Managing Partner at Mako Moco puts it, “customers not only fall in love with the festival, they fall in love with Key West itself”
After producing events for many years, we’re proud to announce that Mako Moco is partnering with Easol to streamline its business and fuel its growth.
More than a box office
As industry experts, Mako Moco offers full-stack services to produce festivals — from event management and planning to execution, administration and marketing.
On top of standard tickets, Mako Moco also sells packages with hotels and extra activities around the island, such as fishing and boat trips. “We have a saying that we're more than a box office,” says Kyle. “We function as the interface for those that are interested in the fantastic festivals that we represent.”
Before partnering with Easol, their expert team juggled selling all of these complex customer journeys impressively - but were being stretched by having to stitch together a web of platforms to pull it off. To add to demands on the team, they also cater to a customer-base that’s made over 50% of their bookings via the phone. As Alyssa puts it, the Mako Moco team’s goal was always, “to create streamlined processes that don't take away from the guest experience, but also allow us to, be more efficient.”
“To have a piece of software as an event organiser that says, all right, ‘It's gonna be a whole lot more than just your ticket. It's also gonna be your accommodation, but it's also gonna be these 30 other things that you could possibly do.’ This type of software just didn't exist out there,” says Kyle. “So, when we first saw Easol, it was a real a-ha moment.”
Unlike the old ways of ticketing, Easol’s Experience Commerce puts the control back into the hands of festival organisers, so that they can run and sell their event on their terms with an all-in-one toolkit.
That means you can use one platform to build a fully branded website with a customisable booking journey, sell any experience, set your own booking fees, configure your payment methods, own your data to track customers that’s critical for advertising campaigns and so much more.
“Easol is flexible enough to do all kinds of experiences — water excursions to rental business to everything,” says Kyle. “We think this platform will help us dominate just about any marketplace in just about any city, and we're excited to flex its muscle.”
Because Easol brings ticketing, website and bookings all in one place, Mako Moco can streamline its operations and focus on creating an amazing experience for its guests.
“When we first started, we used standard ticketing software and had these two systems completely separate from each other, and teams working, disjointed, which is a challenge,” says Kyle. “Since learning and utilising Easol, we finally have these systems integrated. Everyone is trained in the same software and has all the information and inventories in one spot. It's what we dreamed about being years ago.”
All three festivals have recently gone on sale with Easol for next year, and while it's too early to say for sure, results are very promising - with over 87% of bookings completed online during the busiest sales period.
There’s still a long road ahead for Mako Moco until next year’s festivals, but Kyle for one is is feeling good about the journey with Easol; “I’m wicked proud to be on this team!”
