Photo courtesy of Michael Calanan

On May 5th, Artists Creative Agency and ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers) hosted a “Photographer’s Self Promotion Pep Talk” at Battery 621.

By all accounts, the event was a success! There were over 40 attendees present. Angela Mateus, with Artists Creative Agency, facilitated discussions between those in attendance who shared advice with one another about the self-promotion and social media tactics they find most effective.

Everyone walked away with a packet of information and offers from all of the generous sponsors. A lucky few won valuable door prizes to help them in their promotional efforts.

A special thanks goes out to Kelly Mossoni at Spyder, who was so gracious and helpful with providing a space for the event and other wonderful resources. Additional thanks go out to the other event sponsors, Agency Access, Blink Bid, Miller’s Lab, Icon Books, Insight, GAIAM, 8888ArtLook and to Biscuits and Berries for the delicious Fajita Bar.

We look forward to hosting more events here in the future!

It’s official. The RISE in the WEST fundraiser held at Battery 621 on 5/14 raised $8,504 for the American Red Cross, with help from the American Red Cross Mile High Chapter. This is the first event of this kind that 621 has been a part of, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. Congrats Patrick Ryan Corrigan, Jake Rishavy, and Ricochet Denver! The weather was a bit uncooperative, but spirits remained high, art and services were big on, and every attendee had a great time. Everyone inside the 621 walls is stoked that we could be a part of this, and we looking forward to doing something similar in the future!

Battery621 has opened it’s doors to 200+ Spyder employees from around the world. On Saturday night Spyder hosted a huge opening party introducing the new showroom, the new product lines, and the athletes that represent them. After the months of work it was pretty amazing to watch the space transform into a venue for a global sales meeting, a fashion show, and then into a full on dance party.

The week kicked off with intro videos filmed by Chris and Colin from Warren Miller on our Chile trip and then straight into the fashion show. Beers were consumed, catwalks were strutted, and everyone seemed pumped on the new product collections.

We spent a good amount hanging and checking out the skyline from the Northwest stoop and are getting that much more excited for the skate-able roof deck that should be coming soon.

The dance party morphed seamlessly into the after-party at a classy gentleman’s club and into sunday morning’s bloodshot eyes. The last few days has been a bit of a blur of meetings, new product, new faces, and good times.

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It’s been rewarding to see the building function well for so many purposes. While the 200 or so Spyder reps and distributors learned about thousands of new products, threw several parties, and had a showing of Chris Davenport and Stian Hagen’s incredible film Australis An Antarctic Ski Odyssey. The epic shots of the boys shredding on the bottom of the earth and playing with penguins looked epic framed by beetle kill on all side and projected in Blueray. We’re hoping to host more movie nights in the future. Ski movie premiers? Lebowski? Goonies? We’ll see.

While all this was going on WinkINC, Somethingindependant, Drumbeat, and The Public Works were cranking away with normal work. We built custom car display stands for Subaru in the shop, started reworking the Supple Collection website, begun preparing for the Spyder product photoshoot starting next week, signed athlete contracts, began prepping for our first east coast Supple delivery, booked another Red Bull shoot, and played some epic games of trailball in the shop.

catwalk strutt’n

You can check out a full walkthrough of the building here.

Progress on Battery 621 is coming along at a rapid fire pace, which hopefully explains the lack of updates. Our last (and only post) thus far was 2 months ago to the day. Since that time, many, many important things have happened at 621. Here’s a brief list:

- Drywall and painting is complete
- Electrical is 95% finished
- WIFI and internet is active
- Wink Inc. has moved in and started doing business
- Icelantic is prepping their space with beetle kill walls, custom desks made from Boulder county wood, and lots of fresh colors
- The Public Works has been working tirelessly on Spyder’s two floors of showroom space (see picture)
- A BBQ was held today to celebrate the buildings near completion and to thank all the crews who worked over these past few months
- And many more items that will be talked about in the coming weeks and months

Here are some photos of the space and happenings at 621:

Main Spyder showroom, beetle kill ceiling

One of Icelantic’s offices

Kitchen and eating area

Today’s BBQ – photo by Kara Primomo

Battery621 is a swarm of activity with every major sub pretty much on location jockeying for parking and working positions. Our on premise building superintendent, Louis, from Sprung Construction is doing an amazing job of being air traffic control for everything happening. The building is literally changing daily with dozens of new window opens, door openings, electrical being run, kitchen about to go in and on and on. Our partners from Starwall on are onsite installing their Nxt Wall and Finesse Wall systems. These modular wall systems are truly going to take things to another level of flexibility and final finish.