Phil Song’s passion all rooted from skateboarding led to kadence.world, a sub-culture agency in the world of arts and culture, including the new bevy cafe.
Song said kadence.world is all about co-creating with brands that want to connect with sub-culture communities offering unique methods and re-invented marketing services.
Part of the initiative includes the bevy cafe and space which now has two locations in Toronto – the first at 738 Dundas St. E. and the latest in The Combine complex at 225 Wellington St. W.
“During the pandemic when we got hit, we really wanted to create like a home base for what we were doing pre-COVID in creating a hub for the sub-culture communities that we’re a part of to come and be able to produce art and skate,” said Song.
“And I guess like when things were really closed have a platform for people to come together. We actually acquired the original bevy space in Regent Park in Toronto during the pandemic times. So we’ve had this space for over two years but what’s great about it is we didn’t open until about eight months ago. The space was built with the community. It’s a multi-use space. We have a cafe, skate, paint shop and an event space.”
Song said the two locations are a pretty big contrast.
“The first location is in Regent Park which is a pretty hard core, revitalized neighbourhood. It was the first I believe government housing project in Canada, or maybe North America. The other location, The Combine, is in the CBC building so it’s right in pretty much the core financial district of Toronto.”
At The Combine, kadence.world is also helping curate some events in the event space area and helping rotate concepts for a pop-up retail shop.
Song said he has plans for more locations but not any time soon.
“We just (opened) the two locations. I’m pretty happy and blessed that we have a lot of steam and we’ve got a lot of community love and support,” he said. “It is a goal. It’s a platform for the community but it’s a business as well. Even the cafe side. I’m not going to pretend I’m a great coffee barista/owner so I’ve partnered up with another coffee business which is really great at building community and have five other locations across the city.”
Song said the goal of kadence.world, which began just over a decade ago, is to co-create with friends with sub-culture communities.
“Originally it was a skateboard distribution, licensing, retail model. It sounds like it was a planned business but it was a lot of community building which gave us opportunities. A lot of brands started reaching out and said hey we loved your support on the brand licensing side for all of sudden I learned how to do an import/export business but doing I think the marketing side and being able to get budgets and do rad things for the community is kind of what led us to today on a more service model type of business,” he said.
It includes MURUS (Mural Production & Outdoor Media).
“Rather than your traditional billboards we have an inventory of walls across Canada where we co-create with brands and street artists to do murals. We do activations like listening parties, video premieres, workshops and talks to a lot of content creation,” he said.
