Overview

Name: Edition Capital Ltd
Address: 54 Kingsway Place, Sans Walk, London, London, EC1R 0LU, England
Telephone: 020 3145 1851
Price range: $$$$

FOUNDERS	Rob Tominey & Aden Levin
ESTABLISHED	2012
INVESTMENT	2017

Like a lot of our portfolio companies, we met the Mainstage Festivals founders, Rob and Aden, several years before investing. When we met, they’d been running the ski and music festival Snowboxx for 3 years which was delivering strong organic growth.

Snowboxx was the first international festival that the pair had created, and we were impressed from the offset by the reputation they were building in the international space. It was another 2 years before we invested, but we stayed in contact with the team and watched Snowboxx grow in popularity. Getting the timing right for when a business is ready for that next stage of growth through investment is really important, and so we like to meet businesses that excite us early on to begin building a great relationship.

2 MAINSTAGE Rectangle — Kala Festival 2019

Background

When we invested in April 2017, Snowboxx had just completed its 5th year and the team were ready for the next challenge.

Rob wanted to use the investment to continue Snowboxx’s development into a globally-recognised brand; something he’s achieved by growing the audience year on year. The team were also keen to diversify and prove that their business model and expertise could be applied to festival holidays that weren’t snow-based, culminating in the launch of Kala in June 2018. In contrast to Snowboxx, Kala is a beach fronted event on a beautiful stretch of the Albanian coastline, with a focus on electronic music, wellness and exploration of its surroundings.

7 MAINSTAGE Rectangle — Snowboxx Festival 2018

Scope

Kala was a runaway success, selling out the event in only it’s second year. Having uncovered a world-leading festival location, the team decided to launch new festivals at the site in partnership with some of the UK’s best promoters.

202 will see two other festivals at the site; Ion (in partnership with Junction 2), and Anjunadeep Presents: Explorations (in partnership with record label Anjunadeep). Anjunadeep will also be hosting a ski festival for the first time in partnership with Snowboxx in the Alps, titled Ajunadeep Presents: Elevations.

Festivals are a market that we know inside out, having invested upwards of £200m and enjoying great success both at Edition and in previous employment, and so we knew where we could add value on operation and at an exit. What the Mainstage Festivals team did so successfully was notice and join the wave of ‘festival tourism’ early-on; recognising that millennials want to look further afield for their festival experience for guaranteed weather and an enriched holiday experience. The Mainstage team cater for this expertly, providing smooth travel options and the Instagram extras like mountain-side bottomless brunches, igloo parties and mass snowball fights.

What we did

Since investment, we’ve worked closely with the team on their reporting processes to make sure they’re best in class, and we’ve introduced them to contacts in our network.

They, in turn, have introduced us to a number of fellow entrepreneurs who they believe will also benefit from a similar investment partnership.

So what’s next? The value of festival brands continues to grow, as new players in VC and festival verticals look to enter the market on seeing the strength of the industry. We’re looking forward to an exciting few years ahead with the team, watching their brands go from strength to strength. And we can only hope that the Edition team’s skiing ability goes the same way.

9 MAINSTAGE Rectangle Smaller 1280x852 — Kala 2019

Get In Touch

Want to learn more about our services, or find out how to invest?
Call us on 020 3145 1851, or email [email protected]

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