KEVIN TIGHE, 23, owner, founder and president, Cross Coast Interactive LLC, downtown Los Angeles
Business: Internet marketing, promotions and branding
Employees: 6
Financials: Forecasts a profit of more than $100,000 in 2010
Fact: A Potomac, Md., native, Tighe, while growing up, always wanted to live in California.
When Kevin Tighe was a student at USC he did a bit of nightclub promotion – a quick and easy way to make money.
But Tighe, 23, moved beyond that business by building on the connections he made with liquor companies, event planners and other promoters to start Cross Coast Interactive LLC, an Internet marketing, promotions and branding company in downtown Los Angeles.
Cross Coast has developed a niche: using social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter to get old-guard products like apartment rentals and bottles of booze in front of the eyeballs of the young and trendy.
It wasn’t an obvious career evolution; he could have stuck with club promoting for many more years. But he saw beyond that line of work.
“I was a little smarter. A lot of club promoters end up being 30 years old and still are promoters,” said Tighe, who graduated from USC in spring 2009 with an undergraduate degree in business.
Tighe first got involved in marketing and branding in 2006 after he offered his services to Castle Brands Inc., an alcohol manufacturer and importer. He was familiar with the company because his family had invested in it, and he wasn’t impressed with how it was handling its promotions.
Tighe felt that the New York-based company, which sells Boru Vodka and Gosling’s Rum, could do a better job at marketing its brands. He convinced the company to sponsor a nightclub event.
He said that the event at the Avalon Hollywood nightclub was a success; he ended up using it as a springboard to get business from other brands. He also started going to nightlife and liquor trade shows to network.
Tighe founded Cross Coast Interactive in June 2008 while still in school. At the end of 2008, he brought in partner Niko Cangemi, a friend from USC, to handle online media buying. Then, in early 2009, Andrew Batey joined the company to work on the promotions business. The company now has eight clients.
Tighe has expanded his business beyond the world of nightclubs in the last two years, though Cross Coast does connect liquor companies with club events. His clients include hip-hop artist Sam Adams and Tenten Wilshire LLC, which hired Cross Coast to market and brand the 227-unit apartment project it owns at 1010 Wilshire Blvd. in downtown.
Cross Coast uses new media to promote its clients. For example, the company created a Facebook page for Adams, and has booked him shows and organized a recent record-release party. It has also organized monthly “tenant outings” for residents at 1010 Wilshire. The events, which have included trips to downtown bars, are for current residents, but are also designed to attract prospective ones.
Clients who contract Cross Coast to handle online promotion pay a monthly fee of $1,000 to $1,500 a month. Certain projects, such as the construction of a Web site, cost extra. While the company booked a small, undisclosed loss in 2009 due to startup costs, Tighe expects it to make a profit of more than $100,000 this year.
He said he’d like to double the company’s client base, but do it in a thoughtful manner.
“We need to grow correctly,” Tighe said. “I don’t want to take on too many clients.”
