Originally, we were purchasing season tickets for the Toronto Maple Leafs, from individuals for our 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 deal called "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,

• Purple’s are from $30,000 to $40,000 a pair,
• Green’s and Blues are $32,000 to $50,000 a pair
• Red’s are $35,000 to $60,000 a pair
• Air Canada Clubs are $35,000 to $60,000 a pair
• Gold’s are $60,000 to $90,000 a pair
• Platinum’s are $60,000 to $125.000 a pair.

We as well as 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 face value to pay the "interest" cost on our seat licenses as well as the administrative costs associated with managing the tickets. We determined that a number of other companies and individuals were in similiar 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 don’t have the time associated with selling the tickets and then managing the process. We were asked or offer assistance to those companies and individuals to adminster the process of selling off their excess inventory.

Also, as Air Canada Club and Platinum seat holders at the Air Canada Center, we are entitled to pre-purchase, before public sale, concert and other event tickets, such as like Shania Twain, ice shows, and other events. Again, we and our clients, made not have a need for these event tickets so we can provide them to members of Lange’s Hangar at a reasonable convenience fee of $30 to $50 over face value.

We started as a little group in 2000, by faxing out a weekly update of tickets that we couldn’t use or wanted to sell off. Two things happened,

1. The number of people that wanted information grew very quickly, from 10 to 25 to 45 to hundreds all in the first year,
2. Others came to us and asked for assistance to sell off their excess inventory of tickets.

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 you may have gold’s for sale and the person looking for tickets only wants greens, or you have greens for sale, and the purchaser is really only looking for platinum’s and on top of that really only wants week day games, so he or she can entertain clients during the week, but you now have weekend games to deal with. 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 are 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 in , presently Matt and Jason handle 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 Sept 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 website, 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 2008! 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. I will go out on the limb and make my sales predictions as i do every year, one i think we will handle 17,000 tickets this year, and two we should see sales hit $3,000,000 for 2008.

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 that should ensure we can assist those that need to sell their inexpensive tickets. We have lowered our service fees as the following, for tickets that are being offered for less than $120 per ticket we now charge $20 per ticket to the buyer, this is down from our previous charge of $35 to the buyer. We will continue to charge $35 per ticket for tickets from $126 to $399 per ticket, and for those very rare tickets that sell for $400 or more we will charge $50 per ticket.

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

-Asking price between $121 and $399 we add $35 per ticket

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

Please note, it is also the seller’s responsibility to get the tickets to our office here at 3965 Nashua Drive, Mississauga in a timely fashion. You may find that couriers such as Purolater, will do next day service for approx. $10. Registered mail $7 can take a number of days, and isn’t recommended unless we have lots of time to the day of the event. We can make special arrangements to be open later than our normal 6pm to allow you to drop off the tickets, please contact us if that option can be made available.

 

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. Tell us what you think we should use for our next trailer that we will be designing in the summer of 2006.

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