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FestiHeads

i build stuff that makes u smile :)
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Phoenix, AZ

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Our Story

I wish I could say that FestiHeads was the result of some grand vision that came to me in a dream and that I always knew that my calling in life was to build cool, unique festival gear. The honest truth, though, is that my first FestiHead was an idea borne from having way too much free time. When I set out to build my first helmet in January 2017, it was never intended to be more than a DIY project to help me manage my anxiety in the large crowds of a festival. I had no engineering experience and had really never built anything before, outside of working at a welding shop after my second failed attempt at graduating from college. Deciding to build a helmet complete with fans and some other features was a fairly huge undertaking for me, to say the least. It took me four months to make any kind of progress but that changed immediately after my birthday. Over the course of a five minute meeting, I learned an extremely painful lesson about life as an employee in a large corporation, and my career at Tesla came to an end. I truly loved my job there and I was absolutely devastated, and I honestly didn’t really know what to do with myself for a while. I impulse bought some festival tickets and buried myself in figuring out how to build my own costume just to keep myself from going crazy. I didn’t really know exactly what I wanted to build, I just knew that I wanted it to be something that was unique. For the next month, I poured every second of my time (and almost every dollar in my bank account) into completing this ridiculous bucket that I planned to wear on my head at Hangout that year. In typical “me” fashion, I worked on it up until the last possible second - the paint was still drying when I got in my car and I spent the eight hour drive from Nashville to Gulf Shores marinating in spray paint and glue fumes. Once I made it to the festival, everywhere I went, people were giving me high fives me and coming up to take pictures with me and asking where I got my helmet. I felt like a mini-celebrity and had never felt anything like that before, so I was instantly hooked.

My first helmet really took a beating (shoutout to the girl that dropped it on the concrete the first day) and it was held together by a combination of zip ties and prayers by the time the weekend was over but I had an incredibly fun time. I also learned a few really important lessons about my design, so when I got home I went back to the drawing board and built three more for me to wear to Bonnaroo (one different design for each day). At Bonnaroo, I camped next to and quickly became friends with a guy named Logan, who was the first person to tell me that I had a great idea on my hands and that I should pursue making them for other people.

I did a couple more festivals that summer, including both weekends of Electric Forest. I did the first weekend solo (a first for me) and the second weekend with a few dozen of my closest friends. It was over these two weeks that I decided I was going to make helmets full-time. I had no idea how I was going to turn that dream into a reality, but I was determined to do so. A couple weeks after I got back, I was sitting on my couch in my living room and my life changed forever - Marshmello himself retweeted a picture of those first four helmets that I built (and commented on them as well!). I vividly remember hearing my phone buzz once, followed by a few seconds of silence, and then the floodgates opened. Hundreds of people retweeted it, thousands more liked it, and I was completely inundated with messages from people around the world asking where I got them. I stayed up all night replying to messages and setting up my Instagram account. I don’t know how many times I got a variation of the “why are you wasting your time with this, dude?” question when I first started building these things, so getting a retweet and compliment from Mello himself really felt like some form of validation. It sounds really silly, but that retweet literally changed my life. I made it my mission to take advantage of the attention I was getting, and I grew my following from less than a hundred to more than a thousand followers in under than a month. Slowly, the orders started to roll in and my profile steadily grew. People started recognizing me at festivals. In January of 2018, I actually got to meet Marshmello at a meet & greet in New Orleans and he recognized me as “the kid from Instagram that makes the cool helmets” before I could even say a word (a similar thing happened at Imagine in 2019). I’m not affiliated with him in any way, but it’s so cool to know that one of the most famous DJs in the world recognizes me and the stuff I build. One of my helmets even made an appearance in his official YouTube documentary! Nowadays, I can’t go to a festival or event without someone recognizing me or my helmets from social media. I’ve had some people recognize me when I’m not wearing a helmet - something that completely blows my mind. It’s unbelievable to me that I have never left the United States, but things that I’ve made with my hands in my garage are scattered across more than twenty countries. It’s been such a wild journey from seeing one of my helmets in the crowd to meeting up with groups of people wearing my helmets - and the group keeps getting larger each festival. I’ve crossed paths with people that I never would have encountered if I hadn’t decided to build helmets. It’s amazing and I truly love it.

I’m the kind of person that gets obsessed with things that I’m interested in. In 2017, I became obsessed with building something to wear at a festival. I never dreamed that it would turn into this and I’m eternally thankful to have found something that gets me out of bed every single morning. Every step of this process has been an experience for me, and it definitely hasn’t been without challenges. In the end, though, there’s nothing that makes me feel better than hearing things like “wearing my FestiHead is the most fun I’ve ever had at a festival” from one of my customers or seeing the reactions from people when I’m wearing one at a show. I wish I could describe the feeling I get when I see random people in the crowd wearing something that I built, it’s absolutely unbelievable and it will never get old. I’m truly grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to affect peoples’ lives by building things that make people smile and I can’t wait to see where this road takes me.