The Rebels of Nightlife
“Playing all the hits. Afrobeats and Amapiano. Live at Cafe Erzulie.” reads a party flyer. Each weekend I scroll through my feed to find several circulating around. My friends’ stories are consistently plastered with reposts from pages like Everyday People, Ginja, Papi Juice, and the like. I’ve begun to call these pages “Party Collectives.”
A party collective is a collective of hosts/DJs who throw parties. Nightlife goers like myself typically follow several party collectives’ IG pages in an effort to plan out their upcoming weekend. For example, this weekend alone I know of several parties being thrown at various bars in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I keep a running list of over 20 different party collectives across NYC, Detroit, LA, and Europe.
At this point, I keep track of so many that when I go out, there’s a 90% chance I’m going to an event hosted by a party collective.
Why is this interesting?
In the same way that DTC brands challenged incumbents in their respective industries, party collectives are challenging traditional nightlife.
My day job for the past several years has been in growth marketing and ecommerce. I’ve seen, read, and written about the rise of “challenger brands”—Glossier, Warby Parker, and Dollar Shave Club to name a few. I’ve worked at and with dozens of brands across industries like menswear, CPG, consumer tech, and entertainment.
Everything I know about the DNA of these challenger brands is paralleled by what I’ve noticed about party collectives.
“After living in the Big Apple for three years, she began doing a lot of thinking about place, community, and how few spaces there were for people like her to authentically connect and socialize in New York. So she decided to create one herself.” (Saada Ahmed, Everyday People)
“Rather than continue to play interpreter between old brands and new audiences, she decided the time was right to build a new beauty company from scratch that would lean into this changing dynamic.” (Emily Weiss, Glossier)
Different founders, completely different industries, two very similar motivations. Hosts like Saada Ahmed are entrepreneurs, artists, and curators. The parties are the product—customers pay for the experience.
In the same way Emily Weiss tapped into the community she built with Into the Gloss, hosts like Saada Ahmed build their product for the community they want to gather. Fans like myself come to expect the same overall vibe at any Everyday People event. It didn’t matter whether I was in NYC or Detroit. Any time I pull up to their event, it’s like they send me to a completely different world. A different realm. One they built just for me and others like me to usher in a new age. Each team member is like an Olympian tasked with building the grounds of their version of Mount Olympus.
This is what makes a party collective different. The community is the core of nightlife, and the team is dedicated to building a new realm for themselves and their ideal community. Big clubs could never. They’re soulless machines built to turnover bottles, tables, and cover charges.
Nightlife as an Art Form
Hosts meticulously design their parties with one thing in mind—the experience. From entrance to exit, attendees are taken on an experiential journey curated as if the host was opening a gallery exhibit.
I went to Everyday People’s NYC roller disco party last October, and this approach of nightlife as an art form was in full effect. Everything was a design consideration. The smell of jerk chicken and jollof rice permeated the air (it also conveniently masked the scent of perfumed BO slipping out from the dance floor). The theme (Studio 54) transported you back to the ‘70s, complete with high-waisted bell bottoms and sequin-laden collared shirts with all the buttons undone.
From entry to exit, I was surrounded by joyful dancing, skating, and singing. Even the wallflowers were vibing. I’d challenge you to find that sense of purposeful design at a nightclub. I lost track of time in their realm.
Everyday People is just one of many party collectives, and one of the first (that I know of). Most I follow have only started within the past couple of years. This isn’t just a coastal city trend either. The first party collectives I experienced were Jerk X Jollof and Houseparty (both based in Detroit). I keep a running list which you can view below:
Who’s Arming the Rebels?
The backbone of party collectives’ marketing is their tech stack. Much like a DTC brand, party collectives use a mix of platforms to manage their funnel. They use ticketing platforms like DICE, POSH, and Partiful. Some even use CRM channels like Community and Laylo to blast notifications directly to customers’ phones instead of relying on Instagram’s algorithm.
One party collective I attended recently hosted their entire experience on Laylo, an upcoming startup that describes itself as the “Drop CRM.” From the Instagram story, I clicked into an SMS opt-in landing page. Once I filled in my phone number, I was sent a text message that said “Show this message at the door to skip the line.” Leading up to the party I was texted reminders “directly” from the hosts, and several weeks after I was notified of another party they were throwing.
This blending of content and commerce plus acquisition and retention is something most DTC brands can only dream of. The audience is routine, the product is sticky, and the ocean is blue.
Party collectives are a multidisciplinary case study, and their founders are too. They're equal parts artists, creatives, and entrepreneurs. The communities they build grow deep roots, nourished by their shared love for music, culture, and vibes. If DTC founders build products for their customers to escape reality, then Party Collective founders throw parties for literal escapes from reality.
If you want to stay in tune with culture, follow the parties.