Jonathan Gomart and Yanis Cottin have worked for a long time as freelancers for big national agencies who require their skills to manage team building events and incentives. They worked regularly on a whole range of jobs over a seven year period before setting up on their own at the end of 2009, creating SeventyNine, an events agency which specialises in team building and incentives.

“We’ve set this up together, using only freelancers in order to reduce the costs of our services,” explains Jonathan Gomart. “And we still work with those agencies who employed us before – such as Sagamartha, Steam’Event or Le Public Système. In terms of office bases, I work out of Ollières, near Annecy, and it is Yanis who will open the Lyon office in early spring”.

SeventyNine aims to stand out from its competitors in the industry by offering more than one single activity. “Our method of working is based on offering a scenario that matches each client’s specific requirements in order to provide an appropriate solution,” continues Jonathan Gomart. “We ask each participant to imagine they are a particular character and this choice means that we can offer something quite different”.

It was on this basis that, in January, the agency worked alongside Steam’Event to organise a meeting in Chamonix for the sales force of a food processing group. “It involved 70 participants and we set up a programme that offered a selection of multi-slide activities including an introduction to airboarding, an avalanche search and rescue activity using an ARVA transceiver and requiring the delegates to construct stretchers to carry out the injured, plus a snowshoe outing in Les Houches to a mountain restaurant with descent on airboards,” explains the agency’s boss. “Sagamartha also used us at the end of January to organise a rally in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. There were 160 participants and we obviously used Egyptian locals to set everything up”.

In 2010, SeventyNine is aiming to organise a total of 20-30 operations, having already handled five up to mid-February. The agency is also working on a low-cost website project which will specialise in event management. It is being developed currently by LookReflex, another company that belongs to the two associates. Each seminar delegate will be contacted directly via the Net and will be able to give details such as food likes and dislikes, medical conditions, accommodation and transport preferences, arrival and departure dates etc. “A single site that will generate everything will certainly simplify the life of anyone handling the operation within a company,” concludes Jonathan Gomart. “We’ll also be able to put online any of the films and photos that were taken during the incentive”.

Rates : airboard / ARVA / stretcher activity for half-day and group of 60 people from 2800 € (ex VAT).

Practical information
Seventy Nine, in Lyon (Rhône)
Tel.: 00 33 (0)6 88 15 42 35
j.gomart@seventy-nine.fr
http://www.seventy-nine.fr/team_building_agency.php