The Gilroy resident and longtime festival volunteer is quick to
credit past director Dick Nicholls
Gilroy – Brian Bowe hasn’t started his job as the new head of the Gilroy Garlic Festival, but the tech-savvy businessman has plenty of ideas on how to ratchet up the event’s appeal – and revenues.
In 27 years, the summer festival has grown from humble beginnings as a local draw to an international one that lures more than 100,000 people. It has also grown into the economic lifeblood for many organizations. In 2005, the festival steered $300,000 to more than 100 local charities.
Bowe, a 43-year-old Gilroy resident and longtime festival volunteer, is quick to credit past director Dick Nicholls and other organizers for the success of the event. But he also has a few ideas of his own on how to guarantee its future success.
For festival-goers, the most noticeable change will be the ease of purchasing tickets. Festival organizers have long wanted to provide online ticketing but balked at the prospect of cutting into charity dollars to pay an outside vendor for the service. Bowe plans to solve the dilemma by putting his technology background to work to add online ticketing to the Garlic Festival’s Web site. The feature will allow visitors to avoid lines by printing out tickets at home.
Bowe also has ideas on how to punch up the festival’s marketing approach. For instance, he suggested surveying festival-goers on their age, income level and other demographic information to help target sponsors.
“We have to develop a sponsorship menu plan,” he added. “If a sponsor wants to donate $5,000, then the festival has to be prepared to give a certain level of exposure.”
Over the last 11 years, Bowe has honed his skills at luring corporate sponsors at NP Expos, a trade show organizer based in Morgan Hill. He started as a graphic artist for the company and eventually rose to the position of general manager.
Even after attaining the top spot, he continued to have his hands in the technical side of things, including maintenance and improvement of the company’s Web site.
Festival officials said Bowe stood out from a pool of 70 candidates for his business and technology skills. But he also stood out because of a keen understanding of what the festival does not want.
“We don’t want to lose the feel that it’s Gilroy’s Garlic Festival,” said 2006 festival president Micki Pirozzoli. “That it is for the people of Gilroy to show the rest of the world who we are. We don’t want to lose that by becoming too corporate.”
In the course of the interview process that ended Feb. 8, Bowe demonstrated to interviewers and board members of the Garlic Festival Association that he understood what constitutes a festival no-no.
As part of a half-hour PowerPoint presentation, Bowe grafted major corporate symbols onto versions of the Herbie Bobblehead, a garlic bulb-headed miniature doll that has quickly risen to the status of festival mascot.
One Herbie donned a Mercedes Benz logo, while another had a Budweiser can as its midsection.
“Those were examples of the dark side of corporate sponsorship,” Bowe said, asking rhetorically: “How much does the Garlic Festival want to sell out? Obviously they don’t.”
As a volunteer over the last eight years, Bowe imbibed that sense of the festival’s spirit while ringing up customers at the Mercantile tent or selling balloons. He also had some help on the home front.
His wife, Kathy Burleson, is a life-long resident of Gilroy who has even more years of experience volunteering for the festival. She currently works on the advisory committee, which helps plan the layout for the festival booths and works with vendors.
Burleson was born in Hollister and moved to Gilroy just before second grade. She and Bowe met while working together at San Benito Magazine, where Bowe got his first job as a graphic artist in 1992.
She said she still hasn’t quite gotten used to her husband being the new head of the festival, but that she supported the decision all the way.
“I’ve been involved with the festival forever,” she said. “I’m excited for him and I think he’ll do a great job.”
The festival has been without an executive director for seven months, since former director Dick Nicholls died last summer from pancreatic cancer. The beloved festival head served as director from 1986 until his death in June, just one month before the 27th annual Garlic Festival, dedicated in his honor.
Nicholls was noted as much for his humility as his ability to pull off a world-class event year after year.
“He was the grease that gets the wheel moving but doesn’t have to be out front getting noticed,” Pirozzoli said. “That’s the type of guy Dick was. I truly feel that Brian is that way also.”
Despite big plans for the future, Bowe doesn’t expect to sit in the driver’s seat right away.
Instead, he expects to spend the next few months sitting in on meetings, getting to know festival organizers and volunteers and laying groundwork for the future.
“I’m really lucky stepping into this,” he said. “There is an incredible cast there already.”
Bowe plans to start the new job March 6.
