Teksupport’s Rob Toma Reflects On Promotion Company’s 10th Anniversary

When Rob Toma first went to Europe, it changed his life. He was in awe with the continent’s affinity for house and techno, and felt the bespoke spaces they threw raves in were unlike anything he’d found stateside. The experience inspired him to start his own promotion company, Teksupport, 10 years ago, with an aim to find warehouses to throw parties and support New York City’s rave culture. 

Last summer, the company expanded its footprint with the opening of its new venue, Brooklyn Storehouse, located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The 6,000-capacity room has hosted performances from major names in dance music including Fisher, Justice and Zedd, with Dom Dolla, Eli Brown and MauP lined up to play the venue next.

As Teksupport celebrates its 10th anniversary, Toma promises some exciting events are planned. Toma says fans should stay tuned, as most announcements will roll out after Memorial Day weekend, but that the summer will be filled with shows to mark the occasion. Toma sat down with Pollstar to reflect on Teksupport’s anniversary, the success of Brooklyn Storehouse and more.

Pollstar: Teksupport often flocks to warehouse venues for its shows. What about those spaces appeal to you?
Rob Toma: As we’re celebrating our 10-year anniversary when we started doing events for Teksupport, the reason why we went into warehouses and raw industrial spaces was for us to create and set a narrative of the type of energy and vibe that we wanted to create. Sometimes, it’s hard to do that in traditional venues because they’re already set up. We wanted to recreate when we were traveling back to Europe over the last 15, 20 years. When the idea first came, Teksupport felt like providing a solution for house and techno in America, specifically starting in New York. Going into warehouses gives you the opportunity to create something that hasn’t been seen or done before.

What have you learned now with 10 years under your belt?
What we do is really not that easy because we’re setting up and breaking down every time. There’s a lot of challenges that come with that in unforeseen new spaces. Now that we’ve been doing most of these spaces regularly, we’ve learned some things in terms of what works. We’re able to do things that are special and that separates us from the rest. 

How do you think dance music is growing in the city? 
I think dance music is sort of peaking now, and I think the only downfall is the cost of everyday life in general. The cost to put on the event and overall inflation affects things, because it hinders and pushes ticket pricing. The ticket buyers get affected the most, all of our events and scaling, artist fees, labor, everything is just higher. My only fear is a bubble might burst because everything is so expensive. 

For me, that’s why I do so many events of all shapes and sizes. From 500-caps to 15,000-caps, which is a really wide range. Most producers on the various levels stick within their realm of capacities and being able to operate. My thought process is being able to do several different levels of activations so that we can corner and capitalize on producing all different kinds of events. And people like to go to different sized events. I do it not only to cater to any and all people who want to go out, but also to make sure that whichever direction the business continues to go, I’ll be sitting in all those different buckets.

Last year you launched a new venue, Brooklyn Storehouse, located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Now that you’ve had a full summer under your belts, who has that room been working for you?
It’s been really amazing. We’ve been in the Navy Yard operating for 12+ years across various warehouse spaces. Coming out of COVID, there was a company utilizing that building for 25+ years manufacturing containers into mobile houses, offices. Once that property became available, we had the opportunity to sit down with Navy Yard and turn it into a permanent venue. It’s unique because it’s the only 6,000-cap standing room venue in New York outside of an arena or an amphitheater. And it’s 6,000-cap legally in one room, which makes it very special, because artists are able to headline shows in a room like this that normally would’ve had to take more than one night to reach this ticket capacity.

How do you seek out new locations to host shows in?
After so many years of creating and producing these pop-up locations, there’s always someone reaching out in many different forms. We’re always getting leads from real estate brokers to independent land owners and now even operating with the city, they’ll come to us and offer us properties that might be good for some one-offs that might not have any long-term plans and they want something for the short-term. We’re able to find these hidden gems every once in a while. Now that the city’s our landlord at Brooklyn Storehouse, we have quite a few amazing locations coming up this year both indoors and outdoors. It’s going to be a big part of our story celebrating Teksupport for 10 years.