Have you ever ever needed to problem your self to be taught a brand new scary ability? Extremely Occasions affords on a regular basis individuals the chance to join eight weeks of free coaching to be taught boxing, MMA preventing, or stand-up comedy — after which carry out their new ability on an enormous stage, at a glamorous occasion, in entrance of as many as 1,000 individuals.
Extremely Occasions has a novel consumer journey: Individuals signal on for eight weeks of free coaching to arrange them for his or her last occasion, whether or not that’s a boxing match, an MMA struggle, or a stand-up comedy efficiency. After that eight weeks is up, members are requested to decide to promoting a minimum of 10 tickets to family and friends to come back out and watch their occasion dwell.
The UK-based firm launched in 2009 with Extremely White Collar Boxing in Derby, UK as their first occasion. Quick-forward a decade, and Extremely Occasions entered the ecommerce world, promoting tickets on-line by way of their web site for the primary time in October 2019. Ashley Gordon, Technical Operations Supervisor at Extremely Occasions, helped them arrange a Woo retailer. As a self-taught developer who discovered WooCommerce for enjoyable a number of years earlier than, he selected Woo for its simplicity, and his personal familiarity with it.
Initially, about six months previous to that first sale on their web site, Extremely Occasions started their foray into on-line gross sales utilizing Eventbrite. Nonetheless, their service was insufficient and cost-prohibitive. Switching to Woo allowed them to considerably improve and tailor their website. “With the assistance of assorted plugins like Tickera, we had been in a position to rise up and working pretty shortly,” Ashley says. “It was a sliding scale transfer, beginning with our smaller occasions and testing the setup, earlier than transferring every little thing over.”
At the moment, their enterprise has seen super year-over-year development in gross sales, together with tripling their gross sales after COVID-19, and seeing as much as 60 orders per second throughout peak promoting durations. A hundred percent of tickets are offered by their Woo retailer.
Industries: Occasions, Sports activities
Key merchandise: WooCommerce
Key outcomes:
- Constantly sees double-digit YoY development in gross sales.
- Elevated gross sales by 500% in 4 years.
- Processes as much as 60 orders per second throughout peak occasion durations.
- Has raised greater than £37 million for charity.
Different merchandise used:
Extremely Occasions’ gross sales have grown significantly since they launched their on-line retailer in 2019. After the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the in-person-events trade, inflicting their gross sales to dip, Extremely Occasions bounced again — with flying colours. Their gross sales almost tripled between 2020 and 2023, after which doubled once more the next yr. In 2024, their gross sales jumped up once more, marking a formidable 500% leap from their pre-pandemic beginnings.
Although tickets to their occasions promote themselves in a way, because the members are chargeable for getting tickets offered, Ashley says Extremely’s advertising efforts give attention to rising signal ups for this system itself, and supporting members by these eight weeks with top-tier customer support. They promote this system throughout their social-media channels and use Google Advertisements to develop consciousness. Moreover, they’ve prioritized the consumer expertise by guaranteeing guests to their web site can simply discover occasion tickets and make a purchase order with out friction.
In keeping with Ashley, the rationale for Extremely’s development is essentially because of this emphasis on the client expertise. He additionally credit their enhance in occasions throughout their three manufacturers. They’ve added greater than 350 extra occasions since 2022 alone. Additionally they upped their ante by changing into ISO licensed to make sure they adhere to a set of strict requirements throughout all of their occasions. Extremely Occasions is one in every of few occasions corporations within the UK to carry this certification.
At the moment, throughout peak occasion durations, Extremely’s web site will see as many as 60 orders per second. This can be a large feat, however elevated visitors doesn’t come with out its personal challenges. To mitigate a few of the pressure on their web site throughout these high-traffic occasions, they just lately launched a digital ready room system that enables as much as 20 customers a minute onto the positioning for a most of 250 periods. Introducing this restrict is win-win: It retains prices low for Extremely, and ensures the consumer expertise doesn’t should endure. Moderately than being met with a gradual website or server errors when attempting to make a purchase order, prospects enter a queue with a place quantity and an estimated wait time. Bonus: It offers Extremely the chance to market to a captive viewers whereas they wait.
“The scale of the consumer base and group imply that it doesn’t matter what challenge you might be engaged on, likelihood is there’s another person that has achieved the identical. Must you want any assist alongside the construct of your initiatives, it makes it very straightforward to search out.” — Ashley Gordon
Ashley describes himself as firmly “Workforce Woo.” Ever since studying WooCommerce, Ashley doesn’t think about using another ecommerce platform. “Any new challenge I work on, my first thought is, ‘Can I obtain this utilizing WordPress and WooCommerce?’”
One of many greatest positives to growing with Woo is the built-in group, able to step in and assist one another.
“The scale of the consumer base and group imply that it doesn’t matter what challenge you might be engaged on, likelihood is there’s another person that has achieved the identical. Must you want any assist alongside the construct of your initiatives, it makes it very straightforward to search out,” Ashley says.
For them, success seems like persevering with to develop their enterprise and enhance sign-ups to their applications. It additionally means their prospects are given a easy journey by this system, and their family and friends can purchase tickets with ease. “All of that is made attainable on account of WordPress and WooCommerce making life as a developer a lot simpler, and the nice assist on supply,” he says.
To this point, since Extremely Occasions started in 2009, they’ve raised greater than £37 million for charity.
Extremely Occasions prioritizes charitable donations and makes use of them as a pillar of their enterprise mannequin. In actual fact, they use their donations as a key indicator for his or her success and development.
Charitable fundraising is a part of the settlement members decide to when signing up for this system. Along with selling ticket gross sales all through their eight-week journey, members are additionally requested to fundraise for a charity of their selection.
Extremely Occasions is presently working occasions within the UK and, as of 2023, Canada — however they’ve massive plans to launch into new markets and extra cities sooner or later. Their present enlargement plans embody the US and Australia. “We’re taking these steps to kind of actually unfold out internationally,” Ashley says.
They’ve simply began promoting tickets for his or her new occasions in Canada, presently in English, however providing the choice for Canadian French as a translation. In 2023, they hosted their first Canadian occasion in Calgary and grew to fifteen Canadian cities working greater than 30 occasions a yr.
As they proceed to develop their Woo retailer, they’ve plans to launch a multisite resolution custom-made for his or her worldwide audiences. This plan would imply particular person websites for every foreign money on supply: GBP, CAD, USD, and EUR.
They’ve been growing a second launch of their ticketing platform. In keeping with Ashley, the principle distinction is decreasing their reliance on third-party plugins and doing quite a lot of {custom} improvement work. For instance, they’ve dealt with the entire {custom} ticketing, distributors, charges, and stats utilizing custom-built options.
For Extremely Occasions and Woo, the long run is {custom}.
“I like Woo and WordPress. I feel it’s nice and I’ve actually loved growing in it.” — Ashley Gordon
Sydney is a social media supervisor (her colleagues would possibly even say a social media sorceress) and esteemed gif curator at Woo. When not crafting joyful content material, she enjoys spending time together with her rescue pups and moonlighting as a keyboardist and vocalist in a rock band.
