AmazingCo

Market position

AmazingCo is a venture-backed experiences platform in the events services industry, positioned against experience-gift and activity retailers such as Buyagift, Red Letter Days, Virgin Gifts, Activity Superstore, Experiencegift and Great American Days. It reports more than one million participants and over 45,000 experiences delivered, an average customer rating of 4.9 out of 5 on Facebook, and estimated annual revenue in the $1 million to $10 million range.

AmazingCo builds and operates its own catalogue of proprietary, self-guided experience routes rather than reselling third-party activities, combining smartphone-delivered clues with a curated set of local artisan producers along each route. The model is repeatable across geographies, allowing the same experience formats to be localised into more than 50 cities in five countries, and it is complemented by an at-home range that let the business continue selling when in-person activity was restricted.

Technology

Experiences are delivered through a technology platform that creates routes and recommendations and guides participants via smartphone, with clue sets and digital experience content distributed by email around the booked date. Marketing and analytics tooling includes Visual Website Optimizer, Hotjar, Google Data Studio and Google Search Console, with HiBob used for HR and dc.js, jQuery and Elfsight on the web front end.

Go-to-market

The company reaches consumers directly through country- and city-specific pages on its website, supported by gift card sales, customer reviews published on Facebook, and a concierge team available by phone and online enquiry. Growth has come from replicating its experience formats city by city, with rapid entry into American markets, and it also sells corporate team experiences to businesses. Its stack includes Visual Website Optimizer, Hotjar, Google Data Studio, Google Search Console, HiBob, dc.js, jQuery and Elfsight, consistent with a data-driven marketing operation.

Couples, families with children, groups of friends and individuals booking milestone celebrations, date nights and days out, plus gift-card buyers and corporate clients arranging team experiences.

Geography

AmazingCo is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, and operates in around 50 cities across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, with staff spread across four continents. US cities include Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, Tampa and Washington, D.C. Australian coverage spans Adelaide, Ballarat, Bendigo, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, Geelong, the Gold Coast, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, the Sunshine Coast, Sydney, Toowoomba and Townsville, and UK coverage includes Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Manchester.

History

The business was launched in 2012 by Silvia Hope, Jeremy Cox and Nick Brozovic as a children's party provider and later broadened into an experiences platform covering mystery picnics, dog-friendly bar crawls, backyard movie evenings and at-home experiences. It raised its first external capital in 2017, followed by a $2.3 million seed round in June 2018 to fund international expansion and a $5.1 million Series A announced in August 2019 after entering 23 American cities in six months. The COVID-19 pandemic cut revenue by 95% in March 2020 and put all of its 50-plus cities into lockdown; the company responded by building at-home and ultra-local experiences and had returned to cash flow neutral by mid-2021, having doubled its team relative to pre-pandemic levels while continuing US and UK expansion into markets such as Los Angeles, Boston, London and Philadelphia.

Risks & controversies

The business is exposed to public health restrictions on movement and gathering: revenue fell 95% when COVID-19 arrived in March 2020 and all 50-plus operating cities were simultaneously locked down, with customer refunds pressuring cash flow. Subsequent snap lockdowns required continuous, near-daily reassessment of which experiences could run in each location. Delivery also depends on third-party artisan producers and venues whose own capacity limits and restrictions can constrain routes.