Originally, we were purchasing season tickets for the Toronto Maple Leafs, from individuals for our personal or company use. They charged us a small fee over face value, which was very fair, and it worked well until Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment added a new idea of a "seat licenses"- for all season ticket holders. This made it possible to jump the waiting list to get season tickets for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but a very serious investment had to be made for the "seat licenses". As an example, the license could cost anywhere from $30,000 for a pair of purples up to $125,000 for a pair of platinum seats.

We, much like other companies, made the decision to purchase seat licenses, but often we are unable to use all the Toronto Maple Leaf, and or Toronto Raptor tickets that we are forced to purchase as season ticket holders. We then decided to charge $30 to $50 over our cost to pay the "interest" cost on our seats, as well as the administrative costs associated with managing the tickets. We determined that a number of other companies and individuals were in similar situation - that is forced to purchase a large number of tickets - but for economic reasons wish to sell off part or all their season tickets, but didn't have the time to deal with selling the tickets and then managing the process. We were provided assistance to those companies and individuals to administer the process of selling off their excess inventory.

As Air Canada Club and Platinum seat holders at the Air Canada Centre, we have access to sold-out concerts, ice shows, and other events. We may not have a need for these event tickets so we can add them to our website at a reasonable $30 to $50 over face value.

We started this little hobby in 2000, by faxing out a weekly update of tickets that we couldn’t use or wanted to sell off.

Two things happened,

By 2001, because of the number of people that requesting tickets, we started to email information in a very informal manner.

By 2002 we were being swamped with buyers and sellers, because people saw the value. It was no longer a "little hobby" to manager the process. Many individuals and companies now had a way to sell off their excess inventory at a reasonable price, but at the same time could access our inventory to purchase at a reasonable price. It’s is a very timely process to place an ad in the newspaper, take the phone calls, especially when people are looking for specific sections, night of the week or teams. It’s a process that takes a lot of valuable time to administrate.

By 2003 we now had a weekly update newsletter called Lange’s Ticket Exchange. This was emailed to our membership list, and detailed our inventory of available event tickets. Our member list has now grown to well over 800 companies and individuals.

In 2004, we now have a full time staff member Naomi Dang that is organizing approximately 54 tickets for each Leaf game and approximately 12 tickets for each concert at the ACC and other venues. We added the Buffalo Bills and Ottawa Senators season tickets to our inventory. Then we get the shock of our lives that the NHL not only will do a lockout of the players (and we assume by January or February we will have a season but a short one), but instead the NHL sticks to their story, and cancels the season. Lucky for us, concerts at the ACC were booked very heavily during the lockout and we kept ourselves very busy during the 2004 season with lots of sales for concerts and Buffalo Bills. We also hit over 1100 subscribers that subscribe to our weekly newsletter. We dropped the name Lange's Ticket Hangar and used Lange's Ticket Exchange as it better reflects that we are a ticket exchange service for hundreds of subscribers of season tickets for different events. We also had lots of requests for events outside of our usual market of Ontario . We started getting requests for tickets for events in Vancouver, Montreal, Chicago and many other cities. We developed relationships with people we trust to supply to us with tickets for events in North America. Our website is now a great tool for our members to clearly see our existing inventory, seating charts that many say are better than Ticketmaster's.

In 2005, the NHL and the Players Association came to an agreement. We have now hit over 1300 subscribers to our newsletter, and selling approximately 80 plus tickets for each home game of the Leafs, as more people understand that we operate a fair system for season ticket holders to quickly sell their seats, knowing we are not asking for a large mark-up on their tickets. We stick with our $30 per ticket over cost policy, and we can report for the first time we sold over $1,000,000 dollars worth of tickets, and items such as Leaf jackets and other unique items. We add a second full time staff member Angela Cane, as we are selling tickets at much higher pace as we move to 2006.

We were looking forward to a very busy 2006, we are adding a couple of new pages to our website including a "posting page" that allows our members to quickly provide the information necessary for us to post their tickets without having to call us during normal business hours. Look for it very soon. We hope to hit our 1,500 subscriber in 2006 as well.

In 2006, saw a number of new items, we added a "posting page" to our website, so that you as our client could 24 hours 7 days a week could provide the information necessary so that we could post your tickets for sale. We saw our sales reach $1,800,000, (80% increase from the previous year) and almost 10,000 tickets went thru our system. We had hoped that 1,500 subscribers would sign up for our weekly inventory of tickets, and we saw that number of subscribers grow to 1704 by Dec. 31 st .  By early December we moved from our modest little office to a new home, while our years on Sismet Rd in Mississauga served us well, our new "digs" at 3965 Nashua Drive is much larger. We have many people commenting that our new location is much easier to access from the highway, as Dixie and 401 was a traffic jam, 24 hours a day. Our new location is much easier to access the highway system from Derry and 427 area.

We have found in 2006 that we are getting more requests for private suites, and we had a number of companies asking us to sell off their excess inventory of private suites for the Leafs. We now have a small section on the Leaf inventory that explains the private suites and lists the inventory we have available.  We certainly see our sales increasing in 2007 in this area.

2007, was a most interesting year for www.eTorontoTickets.com. We had forecast we would handle 13,000 tickets in 2007 and we actually handled some 13,500 tickets for the year. We had anticipated some $2,400,000 in sales, and when we factor in the seat licenses we handled, (www.torontomapleleaflicenses.com) we surpassed that number as well. We had some staff changes, Naomi went back to school to further studies, Michael joined us in early January, as the supervisor, Jason joined us in June and was promoted up to supervisor when Michael decided to move out to the west coast in early Sept. We had Matt join us in September, and Shannon joined us, Matt and Jason handled sales and Shannon ensures the paperwork is done properly! So we have 3 full time people now to handle your request for both selling and purchasing tickets.

We didnt expect some press we got, but the Toronto Star on the September 24th edition of the front page of the business section did a large article about our unique ticket exchange service, talk about the power of the press, as we normally get 100 visitors per day (return and new) to our web site, that day we had over 2,400 hits, and 900 the next day. Then the Fan 590 did a short interview on Sept 27th, that wasn't suppose to be about the ticket exchange, but once one of the morning d.j.'s remembered our story from the Star just days before, and then realized i was the same individual the interview was all about our ticket exchange service.

In late October 2007, we also changed our legal name as we have decided that the unique little ticket exchange service had to have its own legal company, and hence we now ask that Lange Ticket Exchange Inc. will appear on all cheques.
Our website www.eTorontoTickets.com had some 80,000 new and returning visitors in 2007.

We had two major chances in our polices. One, we no longer than the credit card surcharge for using your credit cards to pay for the tickets, but as part of that program we no longer take American Express as the service fee that American Express was charging was just to high. Two, we now charge $35 per ticket for our service fees, up from the $30, part of the reason was to stop charging the credit card surcharge, and second was we found we needed to add staff to better serve you, and that had a higher cost to us.

So what's up for the future? More of the same good service you come to expect from us, as we continue to have more people turn in their tickets to us to help us move them. We hope that you continue to let your friends, neighbours, workmates, email buddies know about Canada's most unique ticket exchange service.

As we continue to ensure we service you our clients the best that we can, we now have as of May 1st, 2008 a new service fee changes:

-Asking price of less than $120 we add $20 per ticket

-Asking price between $121 and $250 we add $30 per ticket

-Asking price between $251 and $399 we add $40 per ticket

-Asking price of $400 or above we add $50 per ticket

We do not replace TicketMaster, or Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment or any other box office venue. We become an additional source for companies and individuals that wish to sell-off their available tickets. In many cases we are purchasing tickets 6 months in advance of the event, holding the inventory for companies and individuals to access as their needs come up.

BEEP! BEEP!

eTorontoTickets has a 53' billboard speeding down the street!

As you all know Lange Ticket Exchange is a small division of Lange Transportation, Canada's leading trucking company for high value products and trade and consumer shows. We decided to use one of our trailers to promote our ticket exchange service. We hope that this trailer will let more people know about Canada's most unique ticket exchange service.

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