Bar Pop events are eclectic experiences; you could be watching sumo wrestling at a beer festival, getting a tattoo while DJs spin electro hits, or boogieing in front of a stage that looks like a gigantic boombox. At boutique festivals Ice Cream Factory, Froth Town, and SNACK, if you can dream it, you’ll probably find it.
Bar Pop co-founder Chris Bausor’s lightbulb moment came while running bars at iconic Australian festivals such as Soundwave and Big Day Out. He could sense there was an appetite for something new.
“People were completely over being in a sea of 50,000. They just didn’t want that anymore,” he says. “So we decided to look at improving the experience with more of a hospitality-based, event-slash-festival experience, and we just started providing that on a really small scale.”
When Bar Pop first launched in 2013, its first event – called Live at the Orchard – was a miniature festival with 500 attendees. While things have certainly scaled up since then, Bar Pop has remained dedicated to offering one-of-a-kind festival experiences.
Growing the festival family
Take Ice Cream Factory, which Chris calls his ‘juggernaut’. Since 2017, the festival has taken over an old ice cream factory in Perth, running immersive, eclectic experiences throughout December.
The festival might welcome 50,000 people during its month-long run, but attendance is capped at a more intimate 4,500 each day – leaving plenty of room to bump into friends and explore the many signature experiences.
“Our events are a combination of intensity, music, activation, and hospitality,” says Chris. “It’s this weird centre point of a Venn diagram. You can watch headline electronic acts, get an actual tattoo, drink cocktails, and discover a silent disco.”
Then there’s SNACK, Bar Pop’s New Year’s Eve fest that trades big touring acts for local artists, focusing instead on creating a hyper-stylised festival world. There’s an Egyptian tomb and red light district-themed stages, but the Instagrammable boombox stage towers over the rest.
Rather than spending a lot of money on big names, Bar Pop instead focuses its funds and efforts on general good times.
“It’s a bit like an entry-level festival where people can go and have a great experience and see five or six different stages that are highly themed, with a whole host of different experiences throughout the night,” Chris says. “What makes that achievable is we just have local artists performing, so it allows the festival to spend heaps more money on the design and experience and production.”
Froth Town rounds out the yearly trio of Bar Pop festivals, a nominally drinks-focused event inspired by beer fests like GABS Festival in Sydney and pitched at a slightly older crowd. But as Froth Town travelled around Australia, it became clear that eventgoers were thirsty for more than just great craft beer.
Today, it’s a massive gathering of craft breweries, cideries, wineries, and distillers, surrounded by a wild west of games, activities, and entertainment. There’s craft beer, sure, but you might also take part in a dad-bod wet T-shirt contest or get a haircut. That evolution is organic, says Chris, and is important for staying relevant.
“People are just looking for more diversity,” he says. “They want every option under the sun. craft beer is still going well, but it’s seriously flooded. There are other categories now that are eating into that in the same way that craft beer ate into non-craft beer originally.”
Success and playing the long game
In the decade since Bar Pop began, the festivals have grown, toured far beyond Perth, and become seasonal mainstays. Despite the success, though, Chris and his small team have learned many lessons along the way.
Festival success – at least for Bar Pop – isn’t about instant gratification. “We don’t want any of our products to be less than 10-year products in the market,” he says. “The harder you go in year one, screaming from the rooftops and really focusing on marketing versus your product, the light may shine bright, but it’ll burn faster. Having the knowledge that you are going to start at a steady pace, which may not result in a year one big net profit, ultimately will give you that 10, 15, 20-year product.”
For those looking to follow Chris and Bar Pop into festival stardom, these lessons should stand out: don’t be in a rush and always provide a good time.
“What we’ve seen work for us is just organic growth and being patient and focusing on customer experience,” he says. “And not necessarily following the trend and the mould of what everyone else is doing.”
Beyond business success, ticket sales, and event growth, it’s the creative satisfaction that keeps Chris and the team hooked. “The site experience design keeps us coming back,” he says. “You’re just constantly being challenged to reinvent the wheel; you can give people wow moments.”
