Michael Dodsworth: How Fanfare Is Reinventing the Art of the Product Drop

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to introduce you to my guest today, Michael Dodsworth, founder and CEO of Fanfare, a platform that helps brands turn product launches, events and collaborations into unforgettable experiences. Michael and his team are redefining what it means to launch something in today’s attention economy, helping companies not only create buzz but capture real, actionable insights that drive loyalty long after they drop. So sneak peek into things that we might be talking about from ticketing and retail to live events and brand partnerships. Michael’s journey has taken him through some of the most high stakes, high pressure corners of commerce, including launch disasters, sold out moments and everything in between. His mission, with Fanfare, is simple but ambitious to make every product launch feel like an event fans remember and brands can learn from. Michael, welcome to the show.

Michael Dodsworth: It’s great to be here. Nodding along to my own intro. It’s a good sign.

Trisha Stetzel: Well, I’m so excited to have you on the show. So Michael, tell us a little bit more about you.

Michael Dodsworth: Uh, so I, as you can probably tell from the accent and not from around these parts, uh, Fanfare is based in LA. I found myself on these shores through all kinds of different forks in the road. Uh, but started life in the north of the UK. Uh, became an engineer pretty early in life. A software engineer. Um, my brother brought home a Commodore 64, and that was me hooked. And since then, I’ve been building software. I’ve been building platforms. Uh, found my way into San Francisco through an acquisition of a very small company and had the opportunity to work in amazing places with amazing people and on issues of scale that I think is pretty rare and unique and has helped kind of build this appreciation for these, these moments, uh, these launch day shenanigans that we all see. Um, but these surges in traffic, the bots, the bad actors, like these are all very, very gnarly technical challenges to try and get your arms around. And we don’t see we don’t see a lot of brands and vendors, even even people with lots of resources been able to take those on. So that’s that’s kind of the, the, the origin of me. Uh, the origin of Fanfare really came out of just frustration as a consumer, having spent my life loving going to live events, going to festivals, and Struggling every single time to get tickets. It’s just incredibly painful and it’s a pain that we all share. Like everyone has their their bad moment like it may be.

Michael Dodsworth: You know, you sat in line for four hours, for five hours, and you saw all the tickets vanish onto the secondary market. But maybe it’s, you know, you booked tickets to the US open, and when you turned up, the tickets were not valid. They were illegitimate tickets. Uh, so I’ve, I’ve heard all kinds of stories, uh, on that spectrum. I’ve felt a lot of that pain. And, uh, I set out at the start of, uh, when was this? This was 2016. Uh, we started a company rival, which, as the name suggests, is going after the likes of Ticketmaster and so on. And we really wanted to provide some competition. Uh, we felt like there really needed to be a better way for consumers to do this. You quickly realize that it’s not just the consumers, it’s the people on the other side of the fence, the teams, the promoters, the artists are also having horrible moments when things go on sale. Uh, and we we built this platform, uh, it was looking good. And when we were at the start of the pandemic, uh, rival was scooped up by Ticketmaster. And that kind of I was hopeful that this would allow me to solve for these frustrations at a larger scale. But that’s not how things turned out. So I ended up just, uh, being frustrated that these problems weren’t being solved and starting my own thing to to go after this.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. All right. So in the vein of Ticketmaster, uh, or beat them at their own game, what lessons have you learned with the experiences as you’ve moved through this journey with Fanfare?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I think, uh, we, I mean, we had all of our values on the wall, and one of them was, uh, respect the problem, solve it simply. Uh, the more we spoke to team owners, to promoters, to venues. The realization of all of the complexity of what they’re doing, just managing these venues is incredibly complex. Working around the seasons of all of the different teams, the sports, the artists like, it’s incredibly, incredibly difficult what they do. And it’s not something that you can just stand up a platform that does something very simple, and they’re going to be able to do their day to day. So that was one, um, it was interesting learning about the the different incentives that different people have in the ticketing industry. You know, I think, uh, and, and often at cross-purposes. Uh, so we really wanted to slow the process down and make it more deliberative and more more careful and so on. But the promoters want to say, you know, sold out in 50s. Right. And so you’re kind of thrown at odds in all kinds of different circumstances. And I think that’s the source of some of the frustration that people feel when tickets go on sale. And there’s there’s only a small sliver of tickets available.

Michael Dodsworth: That’s often because the teams have kind of passed off risk by giving tickets to brokers and third parties and so on. So there’s a lot, I think, at play there. Um, and I think one of the really important, like, um, things to learn from the teams was they, they were they were all trying to create moments. They weren’t just trying to sell tickets. They were really especially the the really forward thinking teams were trying to think about ways that they can really create fandom and really go after, you know, creating experiences that people will remember. Well, uh, good experiences, like the moment they took their kids to see their first baseball game and what could they do to try and elevate those experiences? Like, could they offer them, like a better seat if they knew that this was their first time, could they try and get them back in to the venue if they knew that? These people are kind of on the cusp of becoming lifelong fans of the Dodgers. Say, uh, so these are, I think, interesting realizations. Like, they’re really thinking about how they can, like, create something that’s memorable and they just didn’t have the means to do it.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. The client journey, that’s what’s really bubbling up for me, right? This whole client journey. So you started your story with being on the other side as a patron, trying to buy tickets, and now you’re on the inside working with the teams who are trying to create moments. How did you at what point did you realize that it wasn’t just about selling the tickets, it was about these moments that these teams wanted to create for these families or people who were just buying tickets?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I think it was it was more just reminding me Of. Like what? What memorable moments have I taken? Like, why am I a fan of a particular person or a particular brand even? And it is often these kind of special, special experiences that we share. Right. I think, um, you know, I can remember my first football game. I can remember a rugby game, uh, rugby final. Like, these are like memories that really stick. And, uh, I think hearing the teams talk about what they wanted to do and thinking, like, living in that, you know, the, the, the mind of the family going in and having like, special treatment and like, merch given like all of those things I think would just have created an amazing experience for me. Um, I think Covid taking that away also reminded me how much I missed those experiences. Like being around people, been around groups of people who all like, commonly share in something. I think I really missed that. And, uh, yeah, I think that reinforces me how. How important these, these opportunities are for teams, for artists, for for brands. Even so. I think that’s that’s where it came from.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. So there’s so much noise out there, Michael. Just so much noise. And we’re all bombarded with so many things that are going on. So how does Fanfare cut through the noise and really create this moment or this journey for the client?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah. What we’ve seen is like, why the noise gets created is often because the brands have very little information or understanding of what works, what doesn’t work, so they end up just bombarding people. Like my inbox is filled with, with the only one.

Michael Dodsworth: Absolute like I, you know, I have just kind of carved out an inbox over there that I just occasionally look at. Um, just because they don’t know what channel works, they don’t know how often they don’t know, like what’s really going to move the needle with people, what’s, you know, what’s important to people and so on. So I think without all of the, the information and the the ways of using that information, they just kind of scattergun approach it. And that’s what we all feel like when we see those messages go out. Uh, emails in particular. It’s because they’re just, you know, they’re trying their best, but they don’t really have any way of focusing. So I think for our brands been able to give them those tools. If you want to create an experience that’s special, you need to carve out some experience just for your VIPs or just for your, you know, loyal subscribers. And then you don’t want to send messages too often. The most effective way is to reach people is maybe the Friday before, maybe two weeks before. And here’s the channels that work with these people so that, you know, there’s there’s a very high signal to noise on the messages that the brands send out. So when people see a message from a brand they care about, they know it’s not just spam, right? They know it’s something important and they may want to look at. So I think that’s how we’ve tried to help brands with this, like provide them data so that they can make more focused decisions about how they reach people.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. So we’re moving from Michael, the patron, to Michael, the engineer businessman, making sure that we’re looking at the data. Uh, and I think that is so important. Um, as we get kind of to the middle of our conversation, I know folks are already interested in connecting with you. So would you give us the best way to find you and connect with you?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. You can find me Michael Dodsworth. Uh, is my handle. But there are not many Michael Dodsworth’s in the world, thankfully, so you can find me pretty easily. Grab some time. I’m always happy to talk about this stuff if you have something coming up, if you know you have a launch coming up or something you want to get on sale, please reach out. You can also find us on Fanfare. Uh, we’ve been trying to produce articles and blogs, uh, some content around all of these releases. Whether they go well, whether they don’t go well. The to do’s, the the do not do’s of these kind of events and what we’ve learned from it.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you for that. All right you guys LinkedIn Michael Dodsworth is the best place. That’s actually I think that’s how I found you. Or maybe we found each other on matchmaker FM which is a podcast matching. Right. Which is great to, uh, to go and meet some really cool people. Excited to have you on today. Can we do just have one little fun conversation around Taylor Swift, maybe? If there are any Swifties out there. Uh, all right, tell me the story.

Trisha Stetzel: How so? Tell me about switch to and the drop that broke everything.

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I mean, these these things happen so frequently. Uh, there’s the feeling I remember a friend reaching out after the switch to release and he said, I think this is part of the process when things fall over. Uh, I think this is deliberate, like it must be because it happens every time. There’s no way this is just they can’t scale to meet these requirements. And I’m like, no, no, no. They lost business when this happened, right? People went to Best Buy. It fell over. So they went to Walmart or whoever. So these are these are painful moments. And I’m kind of surprised still how often like if I need to find case studies of people who’ve had drops go badly. It’s a really easy dip into X or wherever you can quickly find people who’ve had issues. So, um, I mean, Taylor Swift, uh, everyone on the inside, I’m sure, saw that coming. Uh, you know, just a high volume on sale on Ticketmaster. These things, I mean, they go badly almost every time they happen. So Oasis shortly after that, Ariana Grande recently all had serious issues. I think in the Taylor Swift case, this was a presale that fell over. So not just in the general on sale. This was just her most loyal fans showing up excitedly to try and get Taylor Swift tickets.

Michael Dodsworth: And they’re met with just, you know, an error page or worse. Like they get their tickets and then they vanish. So, I mean, this comes from, you know, kind of an ailing platform like Ticketmaster has been doing this for a long, long time. And I would say, you know, having not invested as heavily as you would like on the technology side, um, having like scooped together all kinds of acquisitions and kind of glued them together. What you end up with is a system that, you know, when you really pressure test it, when you really put some, you know, put some people in there at high scale that it just falls apart. And that’s what you see with with Oasis, with Ariana Grande. Like all of these things just really challenge a platform that is difficult to now. Right the ship. Um, you know, I’ve worked at places where we’ve had platforms that have some years behind them, and it’s a real it’s a constant effort to make sure that they are current, to make sure that they can deal with the traffic volumes as they increase and to keep on top of things like bots and so on. So I think this is just, you know, it’s a difficult problem to solve. Um, but it’s it’s not something that you can kind of tack on after the fact easily.

Michael Dodsworth: It requires like a multi-year effort. And I, I haven’t seen that kind of effort from many platforms, uh, on in the ticketing industry, which is, I think, why rivals approach starting something new, knowing that these kind of traffic volumes happen, that you should prepare for them and you should build everything you do, uh, around those kind of events is where rival came from. And that’s what we’ve done here is just knowing that, you know, at the scale of 3 million Swifties, a lot of things can be put under a lot of pressure, and you have to be the platform that stays up around these things. So, I mean, I’ve been in situations where we’ve had outages, where we’ve had these kind of moments on the other side. It’s incredibly painful. It’s I mean, there was an outage yesterday from AWS. Uh, these things cause enormous damage. And as an engineer in those moments, there’s some scar tissue for sure, built up around those moments. Um, but it really is just been very disciplined about how you build and really keeping like this particular feature, this particular element of what you’re doing top of mind whenever you do it. So nothing really gets into Fanfare without it being fully, uh, Pressure tested to make sure that we can stay up.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Okay. So now I’m. I’m wondering, like, business lessons from Michael. Like, what have you learned about doing business along this journey? From being a patron, taking your, uh, engineer skills, building the platform, staying ahead of the game. What have you learned about business on this journey?

Michael Dodsworth: I mean, I’ve had to learn a lot quickly. That’s the. That was actually one of the reasons for starting Fanfare is I felt like as an engineer, like I had the engineering chops, but there was a whole world out there that I was less familiar, that I was less comfortable with. And the most, the quickest way of getting there was to start something myself and really test myself in that way. So, I mean, I think realizing coming from an engineering perspective, like there’s always the focus on the product, like what it does, how it does it, and the quick realization that people don’t really care too much about that. They don’t care about the details. They don’t care about the amazing engineering you may have done to build some feature. Like, I see a lot of engineers who quickly jump into the walkthroughs and things like that. And it’s not about that. It’s about understanding people’s pain. Like what are they trying to do? Why can’t they do it and listen to how they’ve been going through the motions and what they’ve done to set this up? And what are they really trying to achieve from this? Because, you know, sometimes the answer is not your platform, right? Sometimes the answer is not the cool feature you’ve built. It’s, uh, you know, it’s really talking to to people and understanding what they’re doing. So I think that was a, an adjustment. Uh, like sometimes you think you’ve gotten there and then you, you know, you read your own notes, uh, you go back and look and you’re like, I’m, I’m definitely still talking about how the platform can solve a problem they’ve not talked about yet. Uh, so there’s some great material out there. There’s a book called The Mom Test that someone, uh, pointed me at. And I point people at, uh, generally it’s just, uh, a good way of kind of level setting on that and making sure that you really are getting the right answers. Uh, and not just trying to reaffirm something that you already believe and things like that. So I think that’s been an important lesson.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. I think oftentimes we lean into all of the bells and whistles. Let me tell you about all these amazing things on my product or my service and the way it doesn’t make them feel anything. Right. Those don’t create an emotion. For some people it may, but it doesn’t create that emotion. And you, you talked about this at the at the top of our conversation around the journey and the moment. And that’s really what matters. That’s what people are looking for. And I love that. Fanfare is really focused on that. I think that’s amazing. Okay, so if it’s all right, I’ll switch gears just a little bit. You talk about the sneaker culture. Can you give me a little more insight on that?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah. So I’m an aspiring sneakerhead. I have a large collection in my wardrobe that’s a little bit embarrassing when people come across it. Um, I think there’s a lot people can learn. Brands can learn more, traditional brands can learn from sneaker culture. And I see I see more established brands reaching for this kind of model. Um, and the idea of, you know, running limited sales, doing collaborations and again, like trying to create a community feel around a product like sneaker heads are a group, right? They, they, they understand each other. They know the pain that each other went through to get the products. Like, you can see people walking around in, you know, Travis Scott dunks, for example, and most people don’t notice it. Most people look, look past things like that. But people who know know that they went through incredible pain to probably get those products. So I think it’s that feeling of creating a community around a brand, uh, Supreme were incredibly effective. Like anything that went on sale with the Supreme logo on people would jump over to to to get after. So I think that’s a really important lesson, is trying to create a community of people who love your products, who will espouse, uh, the products, values and, and kind of bought into the story.

Michael Dodsworth: Um, and we see people doing that all kinds of different ways. Sometimes it is the narrative of the brand, sometimes it is having people buy into the, the, the origin story, uh, what the brand is going after. Sometimes it’s just the quality of the products that people put out there can, you know, form a community around that brand. People do it in different ways. Uh, we saw a soap brand in LA called Doctor Squatch do a collaboration with Sydney Sweeney where they had, uh, Sydney Sweeney infused bath water soap. Uh, like, completely bizarre but incredible way of just getting attention to your brand and driving people towards it like you’re the brand that’s, you know, it’s soap. Uh, but you’re trying to deliver and, like, inject a bit of humor into it and a little bit like, uh, you know, trying to do something a little different. So people do it in different ways. But I think trying to do something that creates this, this feeling of community, I think is really important.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. So tell me a little bit more about Fanfare and the role that Fanfare is playing in creating these communities. And uh, why someone would want to go and check out Fanfare.

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah. So we kind of facilitate these launch experiences. So if you have a product that’s going on sale, uh, like I say, building a community may mean rewarding your most loyal subscribers, let’s say. So you want to create an experience that goes on sale at a particular time, and you want someone else to take care of how that on sale happens. You don’t want to be scrambling around in the moment to try and flip things on flip. Flip things off. So we facilitate that. You want to also make sure that they are messaged in the right way, through the right channels, at the right time like that. We can help you structure all of this as a marketing and event. So all the way from announcement through to actually running the experience itself. And then once you’re in the experience doing things that I think help foster that fandom. So things like moving your most loyal members forward in line or giving them exclusive access or rewarding their time even if they’re not successful, like if you’re selling only ten of a thing, most people are going to be disappointed in some way. But if you can give them something in that moment, if you can give them early access to the next drop. Uh, we’ve seen a brand Do they call it the L club? Uh, the people who failed five times to get some particular product were now eligible to an exclusive drop. Like, if that really keeps people, uh, engaged with the brand, there’s a feeling like you are having this exchange with the brand. Like you’re giving them your time and attention, and they’re giving you something back in return. Uh, so I think that’s how we can help.

Trisha Stetzel: Um, I love that. And just creating this community and getting people involved and making them feel special.

Trisha Stetzel: Right. Making it feel special. So who do you serve, Michael? Uh, for those people who are listening, who might be interested, who do you serve?

Michael Dodsworth: So we I mean, we started life going after the people who are running drops, who know drops, but are struggling to manage the process. So streetwear footwear is where we started life. But this is like any where you find scarcity is a good place to to add Fanfare. So this can be you have a a loyal audience, you have a following online and you want to put merch out there. You want to monetize what you have. Like this is a great way of doing that. Live events, luxury products, collectibles. Um, we heard from a guy who he loved ten figure coffee grinders and was frustrated with the process. Like, we found all kinds of places where you have these scarce products and a bad process. So that’s where we can come in.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, fantastic. You guys, if you’re interested, please go take a look. It’s Fanfare and it’s f a f a r e at I o is where you’ll find that. Or you can find Michael Dodsworth on LinkedIn. I’ve got one more question for you. Before we wrap up today, you’ve seen both chaos and even magic in the world of of launches. So if you could leave our listeners with one piece of advice today about turning high pressure moments into lasting momentum. What would it be?

Michael Dodsworth: Yeah, I think the brands and the people we’ve seen successful on this really are trying to really are trying to create something that’s kind of magical for the people who care. Uh, I think, you know, trying to just give people coupons and discount codes just doesn’t cut it, like trying to to engage people, you know, and trying to keep those people engaged with the brand is a real full time effort for people. Um, and I think, you know, trying to do that and trying to create special moments for, for people, for their loyal fans is is incredibly powerful. Like, we see people really move the needle like I think, um, uh, I’m trying Stanley was a great example of that. You know, I think trying to create something that went viral was was their target and their sales numbers. I think it was three x their revenue every year for the last three. Like incredible growth from really going after this model.

Trisha Stetzel: And everybody wanted the pink one and they were always out. I’m just saying this Stanley mug. Everyone needed one. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, Michael, thank you so much for being with me today. Anything else that we didn’t cover today that you wanted to chat about?

Michael Dodsworth: I think that I think that covered a lot of it. I would just say if you if you are struggling with some of these events, uh, as a consumer, like, I’m with you, I’m with I’m with you there. Like, this is painful. Um, and I’m always open to hearing about new and interesting ways people find this problem. Um, whether that’s a brand, whether it’s, you know, people trying to book swim lessons for their kids, uh, these are all painful processes that we go through. So I’m always open to hear about this.

Trisha Stetzel: It’s not just the big things. It’s the everyday things that we’re trying to do as well. Thank you so much for being on. This has been such a great conversation.

Michael Dodsworth: Thank you so much.

Trisha Stetzel: All right, you guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that I had with Michael today, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are about one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.