Morgan Margolis
CEO/President of Knitting Factory Entertainment
Morgan Margolis has parlayed an upbringing in the arts into his position as CEO/President of Knitting Factory Entertainment (KFE) through a combination of skill, luck, and dogged persistence. The son of the late renowned actor Mark Margolis (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) and actress Jacqueline (née Petcove), he grew up in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. Margolis once wanted to be a pro football player, but after attending IS 70 in Chelsea and the High School of Performing Arts in the Theater District, he gravitated towards acting. With eclectic musical tastes, his first live music shows were Jeff Beck at the Palladium and the Talking Heads in Central Park, with other early musical inspiration coming from Black Sabbath.
After graduating from college at Stony Brook University, destiny led him to Los Angeles, where he started as Bar Manager at Luna Park in West Hollywood, supervising a three-room bar, restaurant, and club. In 1999, he moved to the flagship Knitting Factory concert house—at the time a slick, high-tech venue in the Hollywood Galaxy—as Bar Manager, becoming Operations Manager in 2000. Later, he took over as Vice President of West Coast Operations, as the company expanded into opening concert houses in the Pacific Northwest. In 2007, Margolis was promoted to VP of National Operations and produced tours and concerts at high-capacity venues nationally. Within a year, he was named CEO of KFE, a position he has now held for seventeen years. Margolis has guided the company from a three-unit venue business to a ten-plus unit, multi-tiered operation and portfolio company with six hundred employees nationally and abroad.
Today, KFE encompasses: Knitting Factory-branded concert venues in Boise and Spokane; Knitting Factory Management, a music management arm representing artists like Seun Kuti, José González, Lee Fields, and Gogol Bordello; and Knitting Factory Presents, a national touring and promotions booking arm partnered with CMoore Concerts. KFE also includes: partnerships with breweries, bars, restaurants, hotels, music venues, music festivals, music artists, and cultural media properties; ownership of record labels, music publishing companies, podcast properties, marketing agencies, digital fundraising platforms, and music, artist, and culinary management companies; and other creative pursuits like co-producing Tony Award-winning Broadway musicals and critically acclaimed feature and documentary films.
Margolis serves on boards for: crowd-sourced fundraising platform Fandiem; live entertainment and events app Buzznog; the iconic Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace; and music rights catalog holder Chord Music Group. He keeps everything straight through strong hiring practices, surrounding himself with professionals who know more in the areas where he may not have expertise, and is focused on the future of the business.
He concludes, “With major players like Live Nation and AEG dominating the world, Knitting Factory Entertainment must be very specific in our market control and geographical growth to carve out our niche. We aim to spend more and more time improving the areas we have: offerings, experiences, festivals, venues with capacities from 500 to 3,500, and more. Meanwhile, our white-label talent buying division is experiencing strong growth, and we hope to book more than ten venues by mid-2026. KFE is very much a portfolio company with labels, media, and management, and we expect each division to present its own strategic plan for building a stronger future.”