When Alan Semsar was an 11-year-old in Iran, his parents took the family to the Tehran airport and left the country with nothing but a few suitcases, fleeing the war with Iraq. After two years in England, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Semsar’s father, a former bank executive, eventually found work as a court translator.

The wrenching experience taught young Semsar how to deal with change fast, a skill he demonstrates at Barcelona Enterprises, an advertising agency he founded in 2003.

The Woodland Hills company went from designing menus for local restaurants to organizing food shows to producing receptions for luxury car dealerships – all in the last four years. Semsar, 38, said his only constant is change.

“I look at a market and if there are no opportunities, I just look elsewhere,” he said. “We throw 20 darts at the wall and if one of them sticks, we hang on it.”

Early next month, the company will make another switch, producing an event outside the L.A. area for the first time by launching the first annual Las Vegas Chocolate Festival & Pastry Show.

Semsar’s first big change came when he dropped out of medical school after one semester and started an advertising business. During his undergrad years, he had worked for a now-defunct restaurant chain in Seattle selling catering services, and drew upon that experience to bill himself as a restaurant marketing consultant for stand-alone restaurants.

He worked for free the first year, or charged minimal fees, to build up the business. He ran the company from his parents’ home in Sherman Oaks.

Realizing that a client roster of small restaurants wouldn’t be enough to grow an ad agency, he landed a few other retail customers. One was Saatchi Jewelry in downtown Los Angeles, a store that catered to people in the nearby Fashion District. The Fashion District customers soon noticed the magazine ads and website that Semsar designed, so Barcelona quickly had a handful of fabric manufacturers as clients. The company produced advertising, fashion shows and trade booth events for this growing clientele.

Then in 2008, the economy crashed and forced many downtown textile and fashion houses out of business; suddenly, his big new clients vanished.

But Barcelona quickly pivoted to a new business model based on food festivals.

As part of his service to downtown clients, Semsar had begun attending planning meetings for area events and met with members of the Los Angeles City Council. Through those contacts he began managing city-sponsored culture festivals. The first big contract was the African American Heritage Celebration in 2008, followed by L.A. Oktoberfest in 2009.

“The economy took a shift, the fabric people lost their businesses, so we shifted immediately into special events,” Semsar explained. “Our first event was in 2008 and after that demand surged.”

Today, Barcelona runs 24 wine and food festivals, including the Los Angeles Food & Wine Show, Los Angeles Pizza Festival, Calabasas Malibu Wine & Food Festival and the Beverly Hills Wine Show. The company has eight employees. He did not disclose revenue.

More clients

Through the food events, Semsar got involved with chambers of commerce, merchant associations and event sponsors, and started recruiting them as clients. He now organizes events for Las Vegas-based upscale dog shampoo maker John Paul Pet LLC and sports car dealership Lamborghini Beverly Hills.

Ron Brown, general manager of Mercedes-Benz Calabasas and a Barcelona client, said he met Semsar at a Calabasas Chamber of Commerce meeting and soon hired him to organize receptions for potential car buyers in the dealership’s showroom.

“Alan wanted to host an event, so I gave him a shot,” Brown said. “The first one was classy and professional, so we scheduled more of them. He’s one of the best hosts I’ve ever seen.”

Semsar said his eventual goal is to grow into a midsize advertising agency that can compete for large accounts and charity events.

However, Dick Roth, president of Roth Associates, an advertising consultancy with offices in New York and Redondo Beach, said the transition will be difficult because Barcelona doesn’t have a track record with accounts of big companies.

“They don’t have the proof they can handle a big client,” Roth said. “Food shows tend to be retail oriented, but it’s hard to say that expertise means they can sell Oreos or an airline.”

Semsar said his short-term goal is to double attendance at events this year and make the Las Vegas show a success.

His business and goals may seem fluid, but Semsar grew up dealing with change. After arriving in Los Angeles at 13, he watched his father struggle to adapt to a new country, leaving his banking career behind to work as a notary and a court translator.

Semsar wanted to become a doctor and attended one semester of medical school at UAG in Guadalajara, Mexico. He dropped out when he realized he wanted to make a difference in society rather than dealing with sick people all day.

Soon after returning to Los Angeles from Mexico, he opened Barcelona in 2003. When he started Barcelona Enterprises at 29, he often found himself stereotyped with the image of rich Iranians.

“People would say, ‘Don’t you already have money? Don’t you have oil?’” he recalled. “I was fighting that stigma”

A familiarity with down-scale economics proved crucial later when Semsar navigated his company through the recession.

“The economic downturn is not a deterrent,” he said. “If I’m not doing business it’s my responsibility, not an outside circumstance. A good example is the Las Vegas Chocolate Festival. No one else was doing it, so I invented it. And we are going to make money. That’s what brought me to Las Vegas.”