It's all about building that relationship, making new friends, networking. This is what promoting means to Avalon Cortez, and his company Relapse. Starting from the ground up as a Marketing and Business Management Major in Alaska, Cortez started his own marketing company in Los Angeles, and moved his way up the ladder southbound to Orange County, Long Beach and more recently San Diego. “San Diego has a lot to offer, a lot” he says of the finest city in America.

With his talent agency experience in Los Angeles working for Tyra Banks, and his media-related education, promoting in Los Angeles was how he started his career. Since he's been in San Diego, he has taken a whole new approach to promoting. “ I want to build relationships, I want to build a team of promoters and promote together. People are not aware that being an army of one is stronger than everyone being on their own.”

Cortez partnered up with Paul the Promoter and started Endless Nightlife and after a year decided that he wanted something for himself, so him and his team gathered and came up with Relapse. Why Relapse? “I knew you were going to ask me this question, everyone always asks me why didn't you name it Avalon? I don't like the attention to be all on me, I've never been that person. Relapse to me is when someone has stopped drinking for awhile and then they relapse and start drinking again. I want to bring back the good old days, when everyone had a blast at theme parties in clubs, and different events were happening. Relapse the patrons back to that night they remember forever for different reasons.” Relapse will bring that back to the nightlife industry. As Cortez laughs, “I want to bring sexy back.”

His team is known as the 'Classy Asian-Crowd Promoters.' Not sure why his team is called that, but Cortez explains that his team has a variety of backgrounds from his left-hand man Floyd aka Floydalicious and his fashion background, to his right-hand man, Patrick who has been his partner for the past two years. They are going to bring their niches, Cortez explains. “We want to bring events from the Southbound to the Northbound, not just one place, one side. We are setting goals for ourselves every six months so we make sure we achieve them, for our clientèle. We want to make sure they have fun.”

He said he feels that every promoter's dream, is to make sure the patrons have a great time, and the club is packed. The worst thing that could ever happen is an event at a club being empty, no one showing up. And in his so many years of experience, and his successful businesses in the past in Orange County and Los Angeles, and now in the past few months of Relapse, “I have been very successful and grateful for not having an empty club event,” he concludes.

So Relapse is about building that relationship with its clients and patrons of San Diego. They want to bring back the good ol' days with modern techniques and niches and VIP packages. Look for Relapse events at Hard Rock Hotel, Thin/Onyx, Red Circle and Stingaree. www.relapseent.com

Read DYSMD DigiZine version at: September 2009 Digizine