‘We’re still not done’: asembl. founders on 20 years of disruption, risk and reinvention
Twenty years after launching In2Events from a small office on the South coast, asembl founders Gavin Farley and Adam Baxter have built a business spanning three continents.
They tell Paul Harvey why surviving disruption, staying agile and remembering what live events are actually for have been central to the journey – and why they see the next few years as potentially their most productive yet.
There is a particular perspective that comes with having spent 20 years in the events industry.
For asembl. founders Gavin Farley and Adam Baxter, it means having lived through recessions, the ash cloud, the pandemic and the rapid technological changes that have transformed the way events are planned and delivered.
It also means having watched people they worked with as junior marketing executives become VPs of global technology companies - and continue to work with them.
“We’re now attracting the best people in the industry, clients are wanting to work with us, it's all going in the right direction,” says Farley. “It’s not just luck, we've done that.”
The business they started as In2Events 20 years ago has evolved considerably. Today, asembl has offices in Australia and Dubai, and more than 40 staff across three continents.
“Someone once gave me the example of the wheel in the water mill.” Farley adds. “At first, the wheel's very slow to get going. But when you start building momentum, it just carries on and on. That's how I feel asembl. is. There's always something new to be done.”
“From sitting in a small office, with just Adam and I with the Yellow Pages as our CRM, to where we are now, I think is a pretty good success story.”.
‘Build, build, build’
The early years were characterised by experimentation and a willingness to try things, alongside the core corporate events business.
Baxter says the ability to respond to changing circumstances has been particularly important when dealing with wider world events.
“Being agile has been our strength,” he says. “From the start we would just ask, can we deliver this? Whether it's exhibitions, or logistics, or venue finding, we work out what we need to do and bang, off we go. And that's brilliant.”
That adaptability has been tested repeatedly over the past two decades.
“In2Events got to a really good place pre-pandemic,” says Farley. “We were working with some great brands. In 2016 we delivered a pivotal event for us, with Google DeepMind in South Korea, live streaming to 200 million people.”
While the business was going well, there was always a scratch the founders had to itch.
“I always actually hated the name In2Events,” admits Farley. “It felt very cliched, and it was limiting what we did.”
“It was a dormant company that the people in the building next door weren't using, and that was how we ended up with it,” reveals Baxter.
“The nail in the coffin was when a shop opened near me and it was called In2 Kitchens,” laughs Farley. “And then the pandemic hit, which did for everyone – and that's when asembl was born.
The pandemic was particularly significant.
“I don't think I've ever worked harder than during that pandemic,” says Farley. “We were selling thermal cameras, because there was no events work going and a friend of ours had a CCTV camera installation company. Our supply chain all wanted thermal cameras, so we pivoted.”
It was during this time that Farley and Baxter were able to reassess what they wanted their business to be.
“In that time we were always thinking, what do we want to come out of this as? We didn't want to just start again and be the same thing. So really, that's when asembl. was born.”
The group concept was based around an e-mail that Farley sent to himself years before around scale and, a vision of bringing all the best suppliers in the industry together under one roof.
“It’s that one contact, one solution point of view,” he says. “And from there, really, the growth and the progression was pretty impressive. But the work that we put in during the pandemic in establishing the business enabled us to get through.”
Their approach is rooted in a simple principle: the client comes first.
“We’re working for them,” says Farley. “And we never forget that.
“I'm from Portsmouth, I was brought up in a single parent family and I wasn't ever handed anything. My attitude has always been that if you work hard and you want something, you can go and get it. That mentality has never left.”
From technology to experience
The technology surrounding events has changed dramatically since the business began.
Registration, apps, screens, LEDs and digital engagement have transformed the mechanics of delivering an event. But Farley is wary of allowing the technology to become the story.
“Fundamentally, live is real,” he says. “More than ever, in the last 18 months or so, the need to bring and connect people in real life has been phenomenal.”
He sees parallels between the current excitement around AI and the predictions during Covid that virtual events would permanently replace physical ones.
“You can get too carried away,” he says. “An event, in a nutshell, is bringing people together somewhere in something, in a plane, train, car, etc. That's the fundamentals.
“The over engagement, over stimulation of technology sometimes gets away from the actual experience. The point of an event is still to bring people together and create an experience that achieves something for the brand, whether that is selling, building loyalty or strengthening relationships.”
A business that has grown up
The company’s development has also meant the founders have had to change their own roles.
Baxter says that having the right experts around them to deal with areas such as compliance, insurance and other operational requirements means the founders no longer need to be involved in everything.
“As you get bigger it gets harder to do everything yourself. So you bring in the specialists - and let them get on with it.”
It is also part of a broader evolution in the business, with greater emphasis on bringing different people and perspectives into the organisation.
““Sometimes the team we're working with doesn't want to be lectured by a bunch of middle-aged men”, says Farley. “So we've got the diversity and it’s an exciting part of the fact that asembl. grows and evolves.”
Farley says the next stage of asembl.’s development will be about building on the experience accumulated over two decades.
“I foresee the next few years being our prime years,” he says. “We’ve had 20 years plus of experience and we’re very much business ready now,” he says.
That experience is already feeding into the company’s international ambitions. The Australian arm of the business launched last year with partnerships manager Mike Linford based in Melbourne, and the the acquisition of Noble Live FZCO from veSpace last month saw asembl. expanding in Dubai.
The 20th anniversary is therefore less about looking back than it might initially appear.
There is satisfaction in what asembl. has built, but little sense from the founders that they regard the milestone as an endpoint.
“asembl. was built for a reason,” says Farley. “We want to be global, bigger, and doing the right work with the best people in the industry.
“There's an essence about the business. When you meet an asembler, you know that they work for asembl. If you work with us, you know that we're going to deliver the job, it's going to be professional, and it's going to be done in an asembl. way. That's what we want to carry on building.
And Farley’s prediction for what comes next is suitably ambitious.
“Within the next two years, we'll probably achieve what we've done in the last 20, I would imagine.”
“It's probably taken longer than I hoped, because I'm quite impatient. But you know, we're able to speed things up now.”
After two decades of disruption, reinvention and growth, the message from asembl.’s founders is clear: this is the moment things start to get really interesting.
