Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Ashkahn and Graham have developed a bit of a reputation over the years within the industry as party animals. Anyone who has met them can confirm this to be true. But how often to the throw parties at Float On? What are good occasions for float center parties and how do you throw one?
The guys share their party philosophy and offer some nice tips and tricks for throwing a sensory deprivation shindig.
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Ashkahn: Okay. Welcome everybody.
Graham: I am Graham.
Ashkahn: Throw your arms up. The crowd goes wild. I’m pretty sure that’s going on in everybody’s house right now.
Graham: And that’s Ashkahn.
Ashkahn: Oh yeah, this is Ashkahn.
Graham: And, today’s question is, it’s a pretty good question, “How often do you guys throw parties?” Every chance we get.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Some of you’ve been to the Float Conference. You know that we have a love of parties.
Graham: Even this podcast is just like half party right now. Yeah, we have little hats on, there was cake earlier.
Ashkahn: Children’s birthday party I guess is the main style of party we go for.
Graham: Yeah, I mean what else would someone need?
Ashkahn: So I guess I’m gonna go ahead and assume that they’re talking about at our shop.
Graham: Sure.
Ashkahn: Not just in general.
Graham: That’s at least for the beginning of the questions, fair assumption. We’ll see how long it takes to answer that one.
Ashkahn: We throw parties at our shop and-
Graham: It’s great.
Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s really fun and we try to throw them for most things that seem justifiable to throw a party for. We definitely every year do one for our anniversary.
Graham: Yeah, absolutely. It just feels like the right thing to do and also very cathartic.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Okay so, before we get into when we do them, the cool thing about throwing parties is not that you get to show off your tanks finally to everyone or that you get to kind of celebrate in your space and have this mingling of people in your community who fundamentally just come in to be by themselves and the nice dichotomy there. It’s that you get to make a bunch of noise, in a place that you normally have to use indoor voices and it’s awesome.
Ashkahn: That’s true, there is something great about that.
Graham: Nothing like a live, amplified band to play inside your sensory deprivation tank center is just such a rewarding feeling so, I highly recommend it. Yeah, parties are very worthwhile, for that reason, if nothing else.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it is pretty fun. So, you’re gonna have to cancel some floats probably or something of the sort. You usually just have a full amount of free party time in your schedule every week that you can fill in to the party.
Graham: But the good news is, you’re probably also not open 24 hours like we are. So finding a good time to have a party might not be as difficult and easier for you.
Ashkahn: And they’re super fun. Your regular members and stuff like that get to come and enjoy free wine or drinks or whatever and they get to have a good time feeling like they’re getting to know, on a more personal level, the business that they frequent. We often get new people. It’s very rare for us to throw a party without some group of new people that come in and like to spend that time learning about the float tanks. We also throw pretty fun parties. I think people bring their friends too. They’re like, “Oh we should, there’s a party at this float shop,” and they bring people with them to go party because it sounds like a fun party and those are the people are the new people that’ve never experienced floating before. That’s how we get them to come in.
Graham: Yeah and at this point it doesn’t us too much organization or too much money to throw a good event. I think, other than the cost of actually shutting down and canceling floats for the period we throw a party, it’s pretty simple and painless.
Ashkahn: Yeah. We basically move our couches outside, so all of a sudden we have outdoor seating and more space indoors. We have some fold up tables. We bring out some snacks and we have alcohol and some of our staff members become the people kind of serving the alcohol. And you know you’re rules will vary state by state and stuff like that for the legality around all that stuff.
Graham: Yeah and we bring in live music, usually a couple to three different bands. Often we’re paying them a very minimum amount, we’re just trading floats. And it’s great. It works out really well. You can get some really nice organic food of all different kinds for not that much money when it comes down to it. We have leftovers every single time too and it costs maybe a couple hundred dollars in food and snacks. We’re not talking about a huge amount of money here. So other than paying your staff, paying for some snacks, maybe paying for a custom cake. We’ve even bartered for custom cakes. The cost is incredibly low.
Ashkahn: And it’s super fun. You get to have a good time. Your staff gets to have a good time. Your customers get to have a good time. I guess back to when we party, so we definitely do one every year for our anniversary. That’s just super fun and a very easy excuse for throwing a party. And people come and they’re really happy that you’re another year older as a business. It’s great. It’s basically like a birthday party. We’ve done one for John Lilly’s birthday before, which was fun. That was a fun party. We’ve often done one if we go through a huge renovation and we do a lot of upgrades to our business. We’ll often throw a party afterwards a kinda like “Hey, new remodeling party,” or something, as a great chance for both to celebrate and to let our customers know. It’s a really easy way to spread the news that you’ve done cool upgrades to your business. You’re like, “Hey, we’re throwing a party because we’ve done this awesome remodeling.” So it’s a nice way to showcase that and spread the word on upgrades to your business.
Graham: Yeah and just let people know you’re done upgrading now. “Okay, it’s time to get back in the tanks.” We do one just for fun projects that we put out. If you’re doing anything outside the float world, but related to floating. When we, for instance, publish books or have musicians do a bunch of music based on their floats, we kind of do a book launch party of a CD release party. Kinda like, “we did this exciting thing, come celebrate with us and explore with us” kind of celebration. And we do one every year for the Conference. So, if they float conference is in your town, maybe consider having a party for that.
Ashkahn: Which is very fun.
Graham: We do one for my birthday.
Ashkahn: That’s not true.
Graham: I’m sorry, that’s just me. I do one for my birthday. That’s right. That’s right.
Ashkahn: I think that’s pretty much the scope of why we’ve thrown parties in the past.
Graham: Yep. No reason at all. Also a great time to party.
Ashkahn: A good time to party. Yeah, I mean have fun out there.
Graham: Yeah. This isn’t all hauling salt and customer complaints and stuff like that.
Ashkahn: Yeah. For no other reason even if it’s really not necessarily making you a ton of money, it’s just fun. It’s fun to party in your space. It’s fun for all the staff to get together and have a chance to party.
Graham: Really fun to make a lot noise.
Ashkahn: It’s fun to make a lot of noise, yeah. One time we actually got a noise violation.
Graham: Oh my God. I was hoping that we’d tell that story.
Ashkahn: It’s gotta be one of the most hilarious letters you can get in the mail as a float center. They send it to you in the mail a couple days later and we literally got a letter saying, it was from obviously a day we had a party with an amplified band playing deep into the night. Not deep, like 11. Deep for the neighborhood that we’re in. And, we got a thing saying your neighbors had a noise violation and they threatened to spontaneously come by and check on our business to check the noise levels.
Graham: Yeah, sometime in the next couple weeks or month or something like that and we just framed the letter and we’re just like, “Oh my God, I hope they come by.”
Ashkahn: Please, someone come by from the city to check on the noise levels in here.
Graham: Walk in, they’re just like, “Excuse me, what are you?” “Shh, shh, be quiet please.” “Why are you here?”
Ashkahn: So we did get a noise variance permit now, so we’re a little bit more on top of it.
Graham: Which in itself is kind of hilarious to me. So, have fun out there, but not too much fun.
Ashkahn: Party on.
Graham: Or what the heck, have too much fun. And, when you have your own questions that you want to submit, go to floattanksolutions.com
Ashkahn: /party /podcast
Graham: Podcast. Party podcast. Alright. Bye everyone.
Ashkahn: Bye.
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Latest Blog Posts
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #28
Home sweet home! After so many months on the road, it was strange being back here in Portland. We were exhausted, excited, and a little travel weary. The first night back, I slept in my own bed for the first time in three months and the world just melted away.
Having travelled across the United States, I’m reminded of how insular Portland is. We are aggressively fixated on keeping things local. Local beer, ketchup, bikes, pet food, pillows, phone cases… it’s part of our charm. We want to reward people for living here and being a part of the community. It’s so pervasive that, after living here for so long, I kind of forgot that Secret Aardvark hot-sauce isn’t available everywhere, and that most cities don’t even recycle, let alone compost.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #27
Our northern neighbor – a sister city, of sorts – Seattle is the largest metropolitan area in the Pacific Northwest. It’s the land of Microsoft and Kurt Cobain, and the culture here embraces both simultaneously. It’s tech business professional in the front and rock n’ roll grunge in the back. This blend creates a perfect storm of high energy business life and high energy nightlife, making relaxation a valuable commodity. Floating helps fill the void left by nightmarish traffic and overcrowded restaurants.
Given that it’s so close to home, the float centers in Seattle are a lot more familiar to us. Our visits here were more like a high school reunion than they were like the first day of school. During some of our visits, we were picking up conversations right where we left them.
The Float Tour Blog Issue #26
Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in Canada, and third largest on the West Coast. It’s a major hub for international trade, with one of the largest ports in the world, giving it a large migrant population, mainly from Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. It’s also been a long-time home to the Canadian film industry, and has even been nicknamed “North Hollywood.” Dozens of film and television productions from major studios film here every year.
Vancouver is very much an international city. It has large boroughs dedicated to varying cultures, including one of the largest Chinatowns in the world. The society here is more receptive to new ideas, always looking for the next big thing; it’s not surprising that floating has blown up in Vancouver as much as it has.
In the last 3 years, 10 float centers have opened up, most of them being larger 4–6 tank centers. The really interesting thing is how they all opened within the same short amount of time about 1 ½ to 2 years ago, within months of each other.
The Float Tour Blog – Issue #25
We finally made it back to the West Coast! We went through the Canadian Rockies and were overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. We drove through hours and hours of winding mountain roads, fertile valleys, and tiny towns so picturesque they looked like movie sets. It was so captivating, in fact, I suspect Graham and Ashkahn may have secretly replaced themselves with robotic doppelgängers to hike throughout Banff.
This post will focus on the smaller communities in B.C. that are bringing floating to new people every day. We also get to visit Canadian manufacturer Pro Float. They’re relatively new to the scene, just opening up earlier this year – another exciting sign of the growth in the industry.
