We're looking for a festival lackey for Valco's summer tour 2026

Building a Death Star is slow work when we’re supposed to scrape together a thousand trillion bazillion from 199 euro headphones. We decided to speed things up by sending two younglings to tour Finland’s festivals and trade fairs through summer 2026, so people can see, hear and buy Valco products exactly where there are already drunk decision-makers.

We’re now looking for the second of those two humans. The other one has already been picked, and is surely the world’s second best coworker. Where the first one is hiding, we do not know. Possibly it’s you. Possibly not.

The other tour goblin plays guitar and sells headphones. Your job is to sing and sell headphones. Or if singing is not your thing, then howl or accompany on some other (your own) instrument in roughly the right rhythm. Valco is not the Sibelius Academy, but we also do not want people fleeing from our booth with blood pouring from their ears. More or less staying in tune is enough.

On top of that, you’ll sell headphones. In practice you’ll be at the stand, where the visitors are, as a rule, more or less drunk. You won’t be. At least not during working hours. What you do in your free time in the evenings is none of our business, as long as in the morning you can once again stand behind the counter and remember that VMK25.2 costs 199 euros, not 19.90.

Alongside all this, you should also be posting summer vibes to Valco’s social media. This can also be done while less sober. We don’t really have any censorship to speak of. The social platforms might.

Start and finish are in Tampere. Getting there and back is at your own expense. So this is easiest if you already live in Tampere or nearby. People from Pirkkala will survive too. If you live in Inari, you may want to think about whether the plane ticket will eat your summer earnings.

WHO WE’RE LOOKING FOR

You are at least 18 years old. This is not age discrimination, it’s the law. Alcohol is being poured at the neighboring festival tent, and nobody wants to explain to the authorities why our underage minion is partying like the prime minister.
You have a category B driver’s license. The car has to move from one place to another, and somebody has to sit behind the wheel. The guitar player may have booze in their blood, so that somebody is you. Or the other way around. Taking turns, preferably.
You know social media. Facebook and Instagram are old friends of yours (or familiar because your mom and dad use them). But above all, TikTok is your kingdom. You know what’s trending, and you dare to jump in front of the camera with your own face. If every video turns into “oh no, does my chin show” excuses, this job may not be for you.
You have nerves of steel. Festival crowds are drunk. Trade fair crowds are hungover. Both want to explain why their old headphones were better than our new ones, which they haven’t even tried yet. You need to be able to smile and reply “interesting point of view,” while internally hoping it starts raining and washes all these people away.
You know how to sell. Not in the sense of memorizing “closing techniques” from some LinkedIn post, but in the sense that you can tell the customer directly and honestly why these headphones are worth buying. Previous experience in market sales, cashier work, waiting tables or any other job where you have to deal with stupid people while hungover is a clear advantage.

BONUS ZONE

We won’t pay extra for these, but they make you more likely to get picked:

Experience working at festivals, even if only as security or a dishwasher. You know what’s coming.
Experience performing in front of an audience. Shy personalities do not do well when, in the middle of an Ilosaarirock morning, you’re supposed to get at least three people to stop in front of the tent.
Experience driving a van. This is not a truck, but it’s also not your mom’s old Polo. If a reversing camera is your only contact with the world behind the car, think again.

WHAT TOUR MINIONING INCLUDES

Performing at festivals and trade fairs, meaning singing or some other kind of performance next to the guitar player.
Setting up, taking down and putting up again Valco’s stand. This includes heavy boxes, rain, mud, and one zipper that is always broken.
Selling headphones at the counter.
Social media content throughout the tour. For Valco’s account, not yours. If you want to do your own at the same time, go ahead.
Driving from one festival to the next. At some point also charging it. We have an ecologically electric car.
Sleeping on the road. Or in a room. As a rule the aim is to do a day trip somewhere and go home for the night, but this will definitely include all kinds of variables.

A PRACTICAL DAY ON TOUR

You wake up in a hotel room at eight. Your coworker has already been awake since five, because you were snoring. Breakfast is not included, because the company saved money. You pack up the stuff into the car. The guitar player forgets their cap in the room and goes back to get it. You leave. You come back, because you forgot your phone in the charger. You leave.

You arrive at the festival site at 9 am. The tent goes up in an hour, even though the instructions say 10 minutes. Some security guy asks if you’re in the right place. You are. He still wants to see the paperwork. You look for the paperwork in the car. You find it. You get to continue.

At 10 the performance starts. You sing three songs. During the first, nobody stops. During the second, two girls stay to nod along. After the third, one drunk guy comes over to ask where he can get headphones and whether they block out that awful racket you lot are making. He does not buy, but promises to think about it. You promise to send a link, but forget.

The rest of the day is spent at the tent counter. Two sales, four requests for a discount, one person who wants to tell you how their cousin’s headphones broke. You explain that Valco headphones are repairable. They do not understand what that means. You explain again. They still do not get it. Somebody buys a speaker. The day is in the black.

In the evening you shoot a TikTok in front of the tent. The guitar player forgets their line three times. You do the fifth take. You edit it at the hotel in the evening. You post it. You get 7 views and one comment where somebody asks if you’re single. You do not reply.

WHAT WE OFFER

A zero-hour contract valid until the end of September. This means we can’t really promise you any hours at all. In practice, though, June through August are full of gigs. When an unpaid week hits, you can treat it as vacation without vacation pay.
Because all the work happens on the road, tax-free daily allowances will hit your account every day. That’s where the real pat of butter lands in the porridge.
A car for the duration of the tour. We pay for electricity, necessary accommodation and festival tickets. For now we also pay for coffee, but if that expense starts getting out of hand, we will revisit the matter.
One hell of a full-bodied festival summer. You’ll see more festivals than any of your friends with real jobs. You can brag about that at every evening gathering for the rest of the year. You may even forget that you were working the whole time and didn’t see a single band because you were at the sales booth.
Mosquitoes. Lots of mosquitoes. Probably rain and mud too.
Traveling. Finland will become familiar one stretch of road at a time.
Valco products for personal use. This is more of a tool than a perk, because you need to be able to talk about them to customers, but yes, most people do pay to get them for themselves.
Some kind of salary. About €15 / hour + daily allowances. Maybe some arbitrary bonus if the products sell well or some video goes viral in a positive way. Do not expect to buy a Porsche with the wages we pay. Even the entrepreneurs themselves only have one Porsche and that took 100,000 pairs of headphones to sell.

APPLYING

Send a free-form application and some kind of sample (a phone video is enough, no need for studio quality) to hr(at)valco.fi with the subject line "Festival Minion 2026". If you want, link your social profiles too.

Applications close when we find the right person. So do not sit around waiting for a deadline. The first gig is already on 16 May 2026

If you have questions, do not call. Send an email to the same address.

See Jasse’s video for more info: https://youtube.com/shorts/dEI3XecPl74

Next summer YOU could be here: 👇