Patrick Courrielche

Career

While working as an applied physicist for aerospace firm TRW Inc., in 1997 Courrielche started the now ubiquitous pop-up retail trend - or short-term sales spaces - with an event called the Ritual Expo. Initially a nightclub-meets-shopping experience, the event would eventually focus solely on creating temporary shopping experiences during the day and was initially called the "ultimate hipster mall." The event was known for attracting style brokers and cultural influencers in Los Angeles. According to Courrielche, he started his pop-up retail stores with smaller, hard-to-find clothing manufacturers because large corporate brands did not immediately find value in the new concept. That all changed with the 2000 publication of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, Gladwell emphasized the importance of connecting with "influencers" to sell a product or service. Companies began contacting Courrielche to create pop-up stores to reach these influencers, and he eventually sold the Ritual Expo to the creators of Lollapalooza and began working with Levi Strauss, AT&T, and Motorola to execute pop-up retail stores all across the US that featured their products alongside smaller fashion brands and artworks by Shepard Fairey and Dave Kinsey. Courrielche is now referred to as "the parent of pop up."

In 1998, Courrielche started a lifestyle marketing & PR firm, Inform Ventures, with his future wife Adryana Cortez, and in 2003 began work with Toyota launching its new youth brand Scion – considered culturally significant for its use of the arts in attracting customers. He handled Scion's public relations and promotions during the launch, created and produced several branded-entertainment films, including a 2004 docudrama featuring Questlove from The Roots and a 2007 short-film featuring Biz Markie, and in 2005 helped create and launch Scion Audio/Visual - one of the first brand-funded record labels. The launch was highlighted as "the most successful automotive brand launch in the history of the auto industry of North America," with several books and researchers publishing analysis on the launch for its novel approach.

Along with his wife and business partner Adryana Cortez, Courrielche created, produced, and wrote a semi-scripted 2010 series of global warming debates between global warming proponents and skeptics, and moderated by comedians Sarah Silverman, Andy Samberg, Jamie Kennedy, Tracy Morgan, and singer Mark McGrath.

In 2012, he created the first luxury automotive publicity campaign featuring a gay married couple, Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler.

In 2016, Courrielche helped create a 16,500-square-foot creative venue blending fashion, art, food, music, and technology in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan. The venue includes a café, restaurant, and event space and will launch in 2017. The outfitting cost alone for the venue is going to be approximately $19.5 million.

Writing

In August 2009, Couriellech secretly recorded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in which the NEA's communications director, Yossi Sergant encouraged the participants (members of the arts communicate) to support the Obama administration's goals by promoting the United We Serve campaign and create art specific to areas of health care, education and the environment." The White House Office of Public Engagement also participated in the call. Couriellech criticized the NEA in a subsequent Breitbart News piece (pieces of which were quoted in the Wall Street Journal), expressing the view that the NEA was being inappropriately used for political purposes. Eleven Republican U.S. Senators criticized conference call and questioned its legality. Melanie Sloan of the ethics group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said that the NEA's call was "terrible" and "inappropriate" although not a violation of federal law. Following the affair, Sergant resigned his position and the White House issued formal guidance and training for staffers " to make sure such a call never happens again." In a 2016 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Couriellech advocated for the elimination of the NEA, claiming that it had become politically tainted, failed to meet its charter, had allowed the degradation of arts education in public schools, and was unable to meet the arts modern challenges. He suggested replacing the agency with an arts counsel that would continue necessary programs, while advising the President on legislation that he says could address what he perceives as systemic problems prohibiting it from flourishing.

Courrielche is active in the climate change skepticism movement. He participated in the investigation of Climatic Research Unit email controversy ("Climategate") at the University of East Anglia, and claimed that the affair "triggered the death of unconditional trust in the scientific peer-review process, and the maturing of a new movement of peer-to-peer review."

In 2015, Courrielche wrote a long form story "St. Nicholas: The Birth Of A Social Weapon" on the origin of Santa Claus and introduced the concept of a "social weapon" - a packaged idea, message, or product that is used by an individual or group to advance their cause. Courrielche argued that New York City elites crafted Santa Claus from St. Nicholas, a widely known patron saint, to stabilize a city plagued by annual misbehavior every December. Santa Claus was then used as a "social weapon" by merchants, craftsman, city rulers, parents, newspapers, and others to benefit their endeavors. The essay was added to the St. Nicholas Center's resource on the Origin of Santa Claus.

On August 3, 2016, Courrielche published a long form story entitled "Stream Ripping: How Google/YouTube Is Slowly Killing the Music Industry" that looked at a growing trend of alleged "music piracy" enabled by stream ripping sites - websites that rip audio from streaming music sites like YouTube - that was slowly killing the business of selling songs. The story featured YouTube-mp3.org - what Courrielche called the most highly trafficked stream ripping website in the world - and followed its founder Philip Matesanz in his creation of the site as well as his early conflicts with YouTube and its parent, Google. By tracking the former and current success of USA for Africa and it's famed song We Are The World, the investigation showed how the music industry was being negatively affected by stream ripping sites like YouTube-mp3.org and highlighted how YouTube-mp3.org and Google profit from the practice of stream ripping through advertising. "After a short visit to YouTube-mp3.org, 'We Are The World' can be downloaded for free," wrote Courrielche. "USA for Africa receives nothing. But Google gets its cut of the advertising."