How a truck driver taught the world to party
It all started with a camera….
Partyclique.com was founded in 2004 by a long haul trucker.
Traveling across the country he was able to experience the magic, mystique and culture of every city and town he passed through. In 2003 he began carrying his camera with him in an effort to document his life and the people, places and experiences he encountered along the way.
After more than a year of traveling he’d accumulated an impressive collection of nightclub images, some of which even made publication for advertisements in his hometown Wilkes-Barre, Pa arts & entertainment weekly, “The Weekender.”
And it was then, in the summer of 2004 that he realized that there was a culture and individual flavor to every nook & cranny of America…. And the world…. And believing that the world wanted to taste this flavor, he began concepts on a website to display his nightclub photos in an effort to share with the world the nightlife and party culture he’d found.
After several weeks of conceptualization he found himself with a dilemma-what to call it. His first two notions were respectively (wherestheparty.com) and (partycrasher.com). Besides the fact that both names were already taken they fell short in two other ways. Where’s the party seemed too weak for the harder-edged profile he had in mind and Partycrasher seemed downright rude.
In addition, neither names were unique or exclusive enough which was something else he was steadfastly insistent on. While discussing the matter with a friend he remarked that he wanted to form something of an exclusive social nation-like a world wide wide clique and so (worldclique.com) was born-or so he thought.
That brought one other problem, besides uniqueness in the name making it practically impossible to mistake (or forget) the title had to have the word “party” in it. “After all,” he said, “Partying’s what this thing’s all about.” His friend replied, “how bout’ (Partyclique).” He thought for a moment and said. “No.”
No!?
Yes, according to him, “I originally rejected the name, it just didn’t sound right.” But that would change in less than 24 hours. As he tells it, “I thought about it that night while laying in bed and the name kept knocking in my head. Partyclique. Partyclique. Partyclique. Over and over I kept hearing it and then all at once it hit me. I mean it literally hit me-Partyclique!… That’s it!”
“It was like Scrooge on Christmas morning…. I jumped out of bed and nearly broke my dialing finger I was so frantic.”
“You remember what you said about partyclique-register it!”
And the rest, as they say, is history….
With the name in place, on August 16, 2004 Partyclique.com was created.
In it’s original form Partyclique was a simple online photo gallery.
After teaching himself HTML and several months of work, the first website was uploaded on December 1, 2004. Though crude, it would carry the new concept into 2005 until 6 months later in June 2005 work on a new and much improved Partyclique.com began with the new website launched in September of that same year.
Because construction and updates on these sites were sandwiched between his cross country hauls, and because he was working completely alone, progress was a very slow and very tedious undertaking but the new site would carry Partyclique into September 2006 when construction began on the third site.
But before significant progress on the third site could be made Partyclique found itself in a nasty battle for ownership of the domain name due to a dishonest service provider.
While this battle carried on the momentum of Partyclique staggered and in mid 2007 the website was even shut down completely for three months while the drama played out.
In late 2007 with the Partyclique.com domain name permanently re-acquired, the company, now in ruins, would be reborn again and at the stroke of midnight, New Years Day 2008, nearly 4 years after its creation, Partyclique.com celebrated its grand re-opening with a new look, a new attitude and a new direction.
During this time a major addition came to the ranks in the form the Partyclique Models. Originally intended as mannequins for banners and advertisements, the “Chicks,” as they’re affectionately known as, would become the ambassadors of the entire “Clique” media network and would ultimately change the profile, direction and the image of the company.
From then on, Partyclique would be known primarily for its sex appeal.
Riding this wave Partyclique, now in it’s fourth year, sailed into 2010 virtually unknown to the masses and more importantly, unknown in its own birth region of northeast Pa..
That was about to change….
In March 2010 Partyclique forged a relationship with the area’s premier Gentlemen’s Club. This move, the single biggest one in Partyclique’s then almost six year lifespan would catapult “The Clique” into the mainstream. Now visible, Partyclique would grow in size and scope. In fact, the transformation was so significant that 2010 would come to be a milestone year…. But the challenges were far from over….
2011 began another era of major disappointments as many staff members left the company as the company began to struggle financially. In 2012 (another landmark disastrous year) the company fell apart once again and this time the devastation was even worse than the disaster of 2007.
By December 2012, on the very day of Partyclique’s online anniversary, it looked as if the company and The Clique concept would fade into oblivion.
With more than 8 years, tens of thousands of man hours and well over $100,000 invested into nearly 20 websites at that time, The Man About Town would not let Partyclique’s legacy grind to a halt. Instead of giving up, he began a massive restructuring, rebranding and rebuilding project greater than that of any other time in the company’s then 8 year history.
In January 2021 Partyclique.com and the entire Clique network was reborn again under the aegis of World Clique Enterprises. With new marketing and branding strategies. With new website concepts and ideas. With a new direction, a new attitude and a new understanding of internet culture, WCE was able to take the core of the original Clique group of websites and unite everything into a unified workable network.
World Clique Enterprises not only linked the original Clique concept to its future. It simultaneously brought it full circle with its beginnings.
Today, World Clique Enterprises is a mega-media network that spans the worlds of fashion, music, travel, college, comedy, sports, TV, radio and of course, nightlife and entertainment. All of this, plus the beautiful & sexy Clique Chicks (now known as X-Girlfriends) has made World Clique Enterprises one of the fastest growing media companies in the world.
For its founder and creator, the whole thing’s a lot more simple. As far as he’s concerned, the “Clique” concept’s always been about culture of one sort or another. Whatever the case, World Clique’s alpha and omega have always been one in the same….
In his own words…. “It all started with a camera….”
NOT THE END.
