We were lucky to catch up with Katia Kianpour recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Katia, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Riot Night is a brand built around celebrating our favorite artists and music in the rock, emo, metal, punk, and screamo genres. Riot Night the party takes place 4 times a year in intimate club settings creating immersive VIP experiences between the fans and their favorite artists. Most of the artists we book typically perform at larger venues or festival size settings behind barricades with little to no intimacy for the fans unless they purchase or upgrade to VIP experiences. It’s something we really pride ourselves in by basically creating our own VIP experience for the fans and we celebrate the artists we bring out by listening to all of our favorite songs.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve always been a fan of heavier music and attending live events since a very young age. I would force my parents to take me and chaperone me to live music events even before I was old enough to drive or attend alone. The experience was one of my favorite past times and the music was always in my life. If I wasn’t attending a live show or performance I was blasting the songs in my CD player or boom box in my room. My full time job in addition to Riot Night is that I have worked in Marketing at multiple corporate companies since graduating college by creating marketing videos, designs, and running social media. I have very strong project management skills along with the ability to create and execute marketing materials to build brands. All of these things are extremely important to starting your own business today successfully. When the idea of Riot Night came to fruition as well as the first opportunity to make the event actually happen I needed to use all of those experiences to put the first one together. I created a brand around the music and artists I grew up to and loved at those shows growing up and felt there is a community of people out there just like me that would want to join if I could create a safe and fun space to celebrate. But with that simple idea I needed the marketing, production, and social media knowledge to get the idea out there. The project management skills to put it together. And the drive to keep reaching out even when many managers, venues, promoters, sponsors, or agents wouldn’t even give me the time of day because they had never heard us. A lot of the accomplishments and past events I’ve thrown have not been easy feats but each one has built Riot Night to a point now that people are starting to know us, believe in us, and trust that our event will show up each time with a bigger and better show experience. I have attended so many live shows that I know what works for me and what doesn’t as an attendee. I’ll never throw a show I wouldn’t want to genuinely attend myself. I’d rather wait, regroup, and develop better concepts or ideas and put all my focus into creating the best product/experience than just throwing these for the sake of throwing them. I think that is something I’ve become the most proud of. Is the ability to actually say no and take a few steps back to make sure each event is the best it can be for the fans and artists before I even consider rolling it out.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

This is a great question because it can umbrella to encapsulate the entire music & entertainment industry. The music & entertainment industry as a whole is a risk. It is such hard industry to break into, to be different, to be successful. Every single day the odds are against you. People tend to gravitate to what is cool, trending, hot at that moment and can forget you 5 minutes later once your 15 minutes of fame is up. Every single Riot Night event is a risk because the event can not happen unless people show up to attend. I brainstorm each event meticulously and hope that I can create an experience worth peoples time and money. It’s a financial risk every single time I make a bid on an artist, book a venue, put the production together etc… It’s really scary especially when you are alone in this using what little money you have and hope to make back. Depending on the size / popularity of the artists the guarantees they require fluctuate and the rest of the show is built around very tight specific budgets at these small venues because we only have a certain amount of people that can attend and buy tickets yet at the same time I want to keep throwing bigger and better shows. It’s definitely a Catch 22. With that said, we are growing, we are selling out these shows, and we are gaining interest by bigger and better artists every single event. People are buying our merchandise and interacting together on our social media. I never thought I would successfully create a space where I can listen to the songs I love, with the artists I love within reach, with hundreds of people just like me. Every single event I’ve thrown has been a marketing risk and every single one the odds were heavily stacked against me but we’re still here 6 years later. And I don’t think we have the intention to end any time soon.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I think for the most part everyone we have had out for an event as a guest or performer has enjoyed the experience overall. We try to make the show as easy, comfortable, and accommodating as possible so that the artist would more than likely want to return and be a part of the event again or even talk about it with other artists to recommend being a part of a future show. There are probably a hand full of people in the last 6 years that were difficult to work with and that we probably will never work with again but for the most part we have fostered great relationships with everyone and the event is a lot more streamlined and accommodating now than it was when we first started and barely knew what we were doing. We also have developed excellent relationships with managers, agents, and venues and they help us a lot in putting these together efficiently and effectively.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.riotnight.net
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/riotnight
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/riotnight
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiakianpour/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/riotnightphx
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RiotNight
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@riotnightphx

Image Credits
Julius Aguilar Productions and TAG Photography