When you walk into a music festival with hundreds of thousands of people and limited phone service, you run the risk of losing your rave family, actually it’s HIGHLY likely. Whether you intentionally separate or not, meeting back up can be a huge burden on the group and there is nothing worse than wandering around aimlessly hoping to find your missing friend while also missing your favorite sets.
This seems to be a reoccurring problem across most rave families (it’s inevitable, we all have that one friend that seems to disappear). Well, we may have found a solution, and it comes in the form of a festival smartband called Festiie, which was created by three avid festival goers just like us. Festiie is a wearable smartband and app that allows you to send your location to others with a ‘find me’ option. The most impressive feature is that the smartband/app works sans service. The smartband even works independent of your phone, which is ideal if you have a dead phone or even worse, lose your phone (guilty of this). Festiie gives you something that’s far more important than anything else, peace of mind, allowing you to stop the worrying and escape reality, which is the point of music festivals, right?
When we came across this product on Facebook, we were intrigued and needed to know more. We were able to catch up with two of the founders and Foxiie (their stuffed raver mascot) at a trendy little coffee shop in Los Angeles. We all shared some of our festival stories and of course we picked their brains about this innovative new product. Check out our exclusive interview below:
RR – As we can see from your socials, you are also ravers/festival goers. Can you give us some information on your music festival/”EDM backgrounds”?
Jared – Well for me, I’ve been in the EDM scene for a while. Before EDM, I was actually a musician. I played drums in a band, so I’ve always been into music. Actually, I went to my first festival in 2011, it was White Wonderland NYE. That was my first official festival. That festival kind of inspired me to keep on going to festivals. After that, I went to EDC and that’s what really brought me into the festival culture. That one pretty much changed my life. Since then, I’ve gone to every EDC, and I go to all the Nocturnals, Beyond, and all kinds of different events. But yeah that’s kinda how I started off, just from friends who were into it, and they’re the ones who took me to White Wonderland, and that kinda started my festival love.
Desmond – I was actually a professional athlete, I was not into the EDM scene. I had nothing to do with any of this world, but my cousin was like, “Hey, come to this festival with me”. I was like, “You know what, let’s do it, let’s see what it’s about”. I went to the festival, HARD Summer 2015, and it just changed my life. I saw the energy there and I was at a loss for words. After that, I just wanted to know more about it. I wanted to go to another festival. I was just enthralled by the whole thing. And then, we just kept getting lost at these festivals, and that’s when we started realizing like, “Hey, is there anything out there to help us find each other”? Because we want to make our experience even more special, maximize it with the people that we intentionally came there with. The rest from there was just like going from festival to festival. I just smile thinking about it.
RR – So how did you guys meet?
Jared – He’s actually my cousin (laughs). I know, we look nothing alike.
RR – There’s also a third co-founder?
Jared – Yeah, there is. He actually went to school with Desmond.
Desmond – We have him coding right now. Festiie is always working, we’re trying to get that app out! That’s why he’s not here.
RR – Was there one particular moment that sparked this idea or was it a just series of events that led to bringing this idea to life?
Jared – I was pretty much the one with the original concept, I guess. I just threw it out there, but what really sparked it for me was I had gone to a festival with a friend. We got really messed up and lost each other. It became worrisome to the point that I didn’t know where she was and she didn’t know where I was. I was calling her like crazy and she wasn’t answering. We had like no phone service. We were probably lost for about four to five hours. It was just more of that worry, you just want to make sure they’re okay. I was going to all the tents and we finally found each other at the end. She had lost her phone and she was crying because she was by herself. It was a really traumatic experience. I mean, she was okay, we were completely fine and everything, but it was just that worry and we were sad that we missed the whole festival looking for each other. After that, it was more like, “There has to be an easier way just to know where they’re at”. You know, just to see, okay she’s right there and meet up within minutes. It was ridiculous to me how long it took to find each other. That’s kinda what sparked the idea for me. I also went to a festival with him (Desmond) and we lost each other. I was like, “Okay this happens way too often”. All my friends always get lost, it’s kind of a norm now.
RR – And there’s ALWAYS that one friend that gets lost.
(laughs)
Desmond: Yeah, that’s what happens. When it would be like the boys going to a festival, we always had that one friend. I don’t know what happens to him, we just hope that he’s alright. But one time, he went to Beyond with his friend. You know, we were like, “Dang you’re lucky, you get to go and got a free ticket” And it was supposed to be like, “Oh, we’re gonna see this DJ, we’re gonna go here, and we’re gonna go here”. And then when he came back at the end of the night and I asked him how it was, he said “It was absolutely nothing like what I expected because I was so worried about where my friend was and didn’t get to see any of these people because I was just looking for her the whole time”. And that was when we were like, “We literally have to do something”. It went from idea and concept to we have to make this happen.
Jared – Of course, a lot of people have this same idea. We’re not the first to think of it. Even on our Facebook and social media pages, people tell us all the time, “We had this idea too, we were planning this too”. It needed to be out there. It’s one of those things that needed to be out there. Everybody wants it out there.
RR – Can you tell our readers about the festival smartband? Give us a brief explanation on how it works.
Desmond – Right now, we’re just trying to keep it really simple. You go to a festival with your friends and you just want to be able to know where they’re at. We’ve actually been to festivals with phone service and we’ll be calling our friends and no answer. Send a text and don’t get a response until an hour later. That really doesn’t solve anything. We just want that peace of mind at a festival like, “Oh you know, Jared’s over here and this person’s over here. Okay, I want to be found, hit a button and it lets everyone know”. So what Festiie basically does is it’ll actually direct you to your friends, regardless of phone service. You can hit a find me option that lets them know, “Hey, I’d like to be found”.
Jared – Yeah, pretty much what he said. That’s the gist of it, but of course we’re going to add more features down the line once it starts picking up more traction. But for right now, we want it to be simple. Just like he said, have that piece of mind. Just know where they are automatically without having to wait for their response. Not having that gap time of no service or whatever it is, just knowing right away.
RR – You guys tested the smartband at EDC Las Vegas. How did it go?
Jared – It actually worked almost perfectly at EDC. We were getting a lot of criticism on Facebook about our videos like “Oh, they’re not in the crowd”. EDC is one of the biggest electronic music festivals, so if we can find each other in the crowd here, it could be anywhere. First, we tested the Find My Friends app and we weren’t getting signal. It worked with service, but when we had no service, it wasn’t getting any functionality out of it. Then when we tried Festiie, the wristbands connected immediately. We did multiple tests, where one person would go to one stage and we would go to a different stage, and in 15 minutes we’d have them come find us. The person looking had the totem the whole time, so that it wasn’t a giveaway like, “Oh, there’s the totem, that’s where they are”. We would see him coming before he’d see us. He found us every time. We switched it around and found him every time. It was a very successful test. It worked with no service, we even had our phones on airplane mode half the time too. It worked perfectly.
Desmond – One thing with Festiie is we don’t want it to take away from totems, we love totems! He (Jared) put in a lot of hours into the Festiie totem. It was an owl that had wings and moved around. If you have a totem and Festiie, you’ll be able to find your friends, we just wanted to make it better for everybody. Also in the past, we tested it at Beyond. We had put up a video and it went pretty viral. It’s a funny story, we put up the video just to kinda test it and see what kind of responses we get. We used a Porter Robinson song, we decided to use it because we didn’t think the video would go too crazy, since we were just trying to local test. Somebody big saw it and reposted it, then that weekend we were looking at our phones and subscribers kept going all day. We were like, “Whats going on, is this fake?”. On the third day, we checked Facebook and we had a million views. The next day, we got hit up by Porter’s manager like, “Hey, do you guys mind taking the video down”. We didn’t think that was gonna happen. So we did test Beyond, in the crowd and out of the crowd, but some of the comments we got on the video were like, “Well, you guys aren’t in the crowd”. Same thing at Coachella, people commented, “You guys are more towards the entrance”. So we just made it a point at EDC to find each other in the crowd. Because if it works there, it’s going to work in other locations. It’s able to go up to a mile range. It might be able to go further, we’re actually still testing that.
Jared – Yeah, we’re able to do a mile in city with stuff blocking and cars in the way. If it was line of site, it would definitely be more than a mile.
Press play to watch the founders test out the festival smartband at EDC Las Vegas
RR – How do you differentiate yourself from existing/potential players in the smartband tech market?
Jared – Well we have a couple of competitors that we’ve looked into. The difference is ours is a wearable and it’s really small. Our other competitors are big, more bulky walkie talkie style devices. We wanted to make ours simple. When you’re at a festival, you don’t want to carry around this thing with you. We wanted to make it simple, it’s on your arm and you don’t even have to pay attention to it most of the time. A far as our competitors, we have tried a couple of other ones and they were pretty much failures, I guess. We tried one at EDC last year and it was still pretty terrible. It was almost as good as the phone.
Desmond – We want to specialize it for festival goers. A lot of the comparables, they are not specifically targeting festival goers. A lot of it is for hiking, camping, and outdoors. We want to focus on festival goers, because we created this off of that need for a solution in the festival grounds. We want to handle that first and hopefully by focusing on that, we can cater to those specifics.
RR – What are your overall goals for Festiie?
Jared – We pretty much want to be, “the festival smartband”. As of right now, of course we just want to help in finding your friends. In the future, we’d like to provide other features. We’d like it to be more of a social thing, like people can connect with them by touching bands. People can get festival updates through it and kinda make it an all around festival smartband that has everything you need on it, like it will tell you when to get water and things like that. Just to help you out and have everything you need on the wristband.
Desmond – What also happens at festivals is you meet a bunch of really awesome people, but then you forget to exchange information or you’ll trade kandi and the next day you’ll look at your wrist and be like, “Dang, I wish I remembered who gave me this” or “They were really awesome, but I don’t really remember their name”. So you can’t really look them up if you want to continue that relationship. On the flip side, some people want to separate their festival life from their work life. Maybe they don’t feel comfortable giving out their Facebook or what not. So what we’re working on in the future is if you actually see someone at a festival, you can just touch your bands together and it’s going to add you on an exclusive social network for festival goers. It’s not linked to your Facebook, but linked to your festival alter ego profile and from there you’re able to see where everyone is from, where you connected, and you’re able to continue those relationships. It’s down the line, but obviously first we want to solve you finding your friends.
RR – How has Festiie been received by the rave/fest scene so far?
Jared – Actually, really really well. We get a lot of positive comments and feedback. So far like 99% of people respond positively, but of course we’ll get one or two people that are negative about it. For the most part, everyone has just been really positive about it. We go to festivals and people even recognize the logo and come up to us like, “Hey, you guys are Festiie! We need the app, we need the smartband, we need it now!”. People are really happy about it, which is kind of shocking for us because when we first went public, we were kinda scared about how people were going to take it and thought maybe they weren’t going to like it. When we started getting those first comments, people were like, “Oh my God, this is amazing” and “We need this”, and tagging their friends. That’s when we started to see that there was more of a need for this. People were so positive, even wanting to be beta testers.
Desmond – It’s great and that’s actually one of our goals, we don’t just want to put out a product, we want to put out a product that the community is behind and kind of rally people together and come on this journey with us. You know, it’s great, a lot of people spoke with us and told us they thought about this idea and they’re happy to see somebody actually execute it. At the same time, we need your input, the work isn’t done, we need you guys in this to help come out with the best solutions and the best things to do. It’s really great to have that positive energy just flowing out.
RR – Any idea for a release date?
Jared – We have a timeline, but it’s a “if everything goes perfect timeline”. Rough estimation, if everything goes great, is early 2018. We don’t have an exact month, but sometime within the first couple of months of 2018. We are trying to release it before summer and festival season 2018, but you know, it’s all a matter of whether stuff goes how it’s supposed to go. We still have a lot of testing to do and prototypes, but of course our testing is going pretty good right now, but we still have a lot of work to do before we’re actually able to get them in peoples hands.
Desmond – Like he said, but the main part which is the technology, we’re really happy with because it’s working. Now, it’s coming down to the industrial design. We want to make Festiie wearable. Maybe in the future, we want to make it a necklace also. We’re going to have a crowdfunding campaign in the next coming months that would really expedite the process, so we can get orders in and start manufacturing. We’re literally giving everything we can to make that sprint. Our goal is early 2018. What we want to do, as opposed to prior companies in the past, is we don’t want to promise a date and then not be able to deliver. We want to give people a time frame of when it’ll be available and keep that momentum going.
RR – Next festival you’re planning to test Festiie at?
Jared – Right now, our plans are to test it at Nocturnal. We’re going to camp and see how it works with camping. We haven’t tested at the San Manuel venue, we’ve tested at NOS, but we want to test this one because it’s a different shape, it curves around and goes up and down. That’s our next test.
Desmond – We want to have somebody in the campgrounds and then someone in the festival, and want to see if we can find each other. At the same time, we want to do beta tests where we literally just give it to our friends, let them have their fun, and then get feedback from them.
We would like to thank Jared and Desmond for taking the time to meet with us! We predict great success for this company and we can’t wait to try the smartband for ourselves. Although the product is not out yet, we recommend signing up for Festiie updates here and following their socials below.
Connect with Festiie:
https://www.facebook.com/Festiie
https://twitter.com/Festiie
https://www.instagram.com/myfestiiebestie/
https://www.festiie.com/
Photo Credit: © Festiie’s Facebook 2017
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