These Entrepreneurial Sisters Are Celebrities Go to Party Planners
Who doesn’t love a good party? Well, these two sisters know how to throw some of the awesome parties. Massah David, 38, and her sister Miatta David Johnson, 41, are behind a creative marketing firm boutique for celebs.
Their clients consist of Rihanna, 20th Century Fox, Samsung Next, Pictures, Warner Bros, and Universal Music Group.
Not only do they plan and orchestrate events from private house parties to multi-million-dollar weekend-long gigs, while just having six-employee. The sisters produce about 30 parties a year.
The girls watched their mother, Charlotte, plan and entertain family parties, and Johnson even said that her mother managed to make each event fun and unforgettable without spending a lot of money. The girls grew up watching their mother do this paved the way for the sisters’ eventual careers. As teenagers, the sisters even planned events for their friends.
Johnson after graduating from New York University with degrees in journalism and Africana studies in 1999. While working as a publicist and event planner for friends that’s when she found her calling. She started her own business for party-planning in 2002. To get her business, MVD (named after her initials backed then), off the ground she cashed out her 401(k), took a small loan from her family after the bank denied them which held them till the business got off the ground.
While David was assisting her sister in trying to get the business off the ground, she was working for a record label. She later joined MVD full time, but at first, it wasn’t a good fit. They found a way to define their roles with Johnson being the problem solver and being focused on the bigger picture, and David has more freedom to be creative.
The sisters had the chance to throw a party back in 2006 for a young hip-hop artist that had been a childhood friend of Johnson’s husband, John. This party helped the girls expand their creative juices, and this one party helped many doors open. They produced hip-hop artist Common’s pre-Oscars Toast to the Arts party celebrating African American performers, which they have done for the fourth year in a row this year.
Since the sisters are helping bigger and bigger celebrities, their most significant source of new clients comes from word of mouth as well as from stars who come to previous events.
