Cape Town based startup, Quicket, has entered into the online ticketing market to provide individuals and companies with an easy to use platform that makes it possible for them to manage their own ticketing for an event as well as providing them with a database of all attendees. All of this, Quicket claims, will cost less than booking with dominant ticketing company, Computicket and aims to generate substantial competition for the likes of Webtickets, Tixsa and Ticket Break.
The self-funded Quicket, that launched on 1st September 2011, was founded by four friends Tim Church, James Tagg, Michael Kennedy and James Hedley and was originally intended to be an accommodation booking site. The guys noticed that planning a group weekend away usually results in one person taking responsibility for it including the payment which can be challenging. They wanted to find a way for people to pay separately for accommodation, but when they started going down that path they realised how difficult it would be.
Marketing manager, James Hedley explains that “There were several problems with the idea, which was intended to drive traffic to the events website. The problem with payment collection from groups is that we would essentially become a payment processor like Payfast which entails masses of fraud problems and, we also felt that many people would not be prepared to pay the commission of 4.9 % to collect money from their friends.”
Co-founder, Tim Church continues, “Although the idea of a group booking accomodation site was exciting and potentially had legs, we felt that the model would take longer to turn a profit than an online ticketing site. We have ambitions of taking another look at this in the future.”
In the spirit of their original concept, Quicket hopes to eventually be the go-to site that involves collecting money for a group project or event such as birthday present, a holiday with friends, shared celebration or a charity.
The process itself is simple. When signing up to Quicket a user can choose to create a new account or sign in with their Facebook credentials. Signing in with your Facebook details, makes it easier to share events with ‘friends’ on the social networking site. Tickets can include as much or as little information as an event organiser requires and, in the case of simple tickets for small events, can even be sent to purchasers via SMS.
Once users have purchased a ticket, they will receive an e-mail as a PDF document and stored in their Quicket account. The client will receive a guest list and can use various criteria for authentication. For bigger events with a large amount of attendees where tickets usually include a barcode that can be scanned at the event, clients can rent a barcode scanner from Quicket that plugs into a laptop and cross-references scanned tickets with the guest list upon their arrival. Once the event is over, the client has a complete database of all those that attended as well as other information they may have requested during the booking process. When creating a new event, the client has all the information already on hand.
Quicket takes a 4,9% commission on each ticket and charges those purchasing tickets R2,90 per transaction, regardless of how many tickets they buy. “œIf you look at the competition, that‘s roughly half of the going rate,“ says Hedley.
Other features include the ability for users to sell tickets for an event on their website using the Quicket widget and running events in advance for free.
Quicket is focusing on bigger events for now because they‘re better for getting the site‘s name out there and shows that it can handle large events and because the banks are charging substantial merchant fees. The company hopes to bring down those fees in coming months once it is processing larger volumes.
Since its launch Quicket has turned over about R2, 000, 000 running about 40 different events that have included workshops and seminars, music festivals, school and rotary events, parties and even a bingo evening. Its weekly turnover which is steadily growing currently sits at about R200, 000.
As far as developments go, Quicket has just implemented a coupon code system that allows event organisers to issue discount coupons to certain guests, has also made it possible to export your event to Facebook in a matter of seconds and a feature that provides event organisers the ability to collect customer information from guests i.e. blood type for a bike race or allergens for a AGM dinner. “Quicket plans on implementing a few exciting features over the next few weeks including an affiliate programme which would allow anyone to become a Quicket reseller essentially creating a powerful marketing tool at event organisers’ finger tips,” reveals Church. “We also plan to make it possible to sell tickets directly from Facebook.
