The Oct. 30 e-mail was brief and to the point. If you bought a ticket for an upcoming Run for Your Lives zombie 5K race, frame it — it’s worthless.
The sudden cancellation of the popular runs — where blood-spattered “zombies” give chase to the “living” as they wind their way through a 5-kilometer course sprinkled with obstacles and traps — set off a firestorm on social media. Participants demanded money back from Baltimore-based Run For Your Lives’ owner, Reed Street Productions, and even sent death threats to higher-ups at the firm.
But Human Movement Management president Jeff Suffolk saw opportunity in the chaos. His Louisville-based company — responsible for putting on the Dirty Girl mud run and the Ugly Sweater Run — acquired Reed Street’s database of nearly 400,000 customer names and will take over the zombie runs.
Reed Street managers, who could not be reached for comment, told Suffolk Run For Your Lives had run out of cash.
Suffolk believes 30,000 people already have paid $50 to $100 each to take part in upcoming runs. His plan is to make participants whole by producing the two scheduled Run For Your Lives events left this year and making sure the six scheduled in 2014 occur.
But Suffolk had little time to plan Oct. 30 — the next Run For Your Lives event, with 3,000 people registered, was scheduled for that weekend in Phoenix.
“We knew the ultimate goal was to save the race that was happening in 48 hours,” he said.
Suffolk took his 18-month-old son out trick or treating on Halloween, loaded up his trailer with equipment needed for the run and made for Arizona in the dead of the night.
Suffolk, who oversees a staff of 80 full-time employees and 70 seasonal workers, knows there is an enormous potential long-term upside from gaining a competitor’s business.
Suffolk said putting on the scheduled zombie runs that Reed Street walked away from could cost Human Movement $50,000 each, once permits are pulled, the venue is paid for and equipment and staff are moved into place.
But he said the Phoenix event on Nov. 2 went well. Suffolk got help from old friends in Arizona, hired five Run For Your lives employees who had been let go three days before and “brought in our own equipment and built our own stuff.”
David Benjes, who works in the Boulder office of San Diego-based events company Competitor Group Inc. and gave Human Movement a hand in Phoenix, said if there’s anyone who can make the best out of a bad situation it’s Suffolk.
“Jeff has been in this game long enough that he probably wouldn’t have committed to these events if he didn’t have the resources,” Benjes said.
