A Detroit-based ticketing company has received national attention for its success through pivoting to online events during COVID-19.
Passage offers unique ticketing features for niche categories like haunted houses, ax-throwing and tours.
The company, founded in 2014, tripled its sales in the last two years, co-founder and CEO Alex Linebrink said.
Passage operates remotely and out of a co-working space on Hunt Street near Eastern Market, employing 15 full-time workers and three part-time. Currently, it has 890 events actively selling tickets, Linebrink said.
The company made $800,000 in 2019 and $2.4 million by 2021, Linebrink said. The projected revenue for this year is $4.5 million. It has reached 6 million ticket sales across more than 2 million customers and tripled its revenue in the last two years.
Passage has sold tickets for events in all 50 states, along with Canada and Australia. It hit its 15,000th event this month, Linebrink said. Its biggest customer to date is Hamtramck-based professional soccer club Detroit City FC.
The boom comes after a painful transition during the COVID-19 pandemic. In early March 2020, Passage had 1,000 events selling, Linebrink said. By month’s end, it had zero.
In an effort to keep sales going, Passage launched a new platform later that spring solely for virtual events, enabling livestreams and chat experiences when in-person events were not doable.
“We were able to grow despite that and learn some hard lessons about switching to digital,” Linebrink said.
The company also created special features for event organizers to enable social distancing, virtual queues and assigned seating.
In addition, it launched Passage Capital, which provided cash-infusions to small events struggling with upfront costs. The program reached $250,000 in cash infusions and is projected to make $500,000 in capital infusions this year, the CEO said.
This month, Passage launched its Digital NFT Collectibles program, enabling event organizers to offer limited-edition, non-fungible token collectibles.
“This enables collectibles, amongst other things, but the cool thing about NFTs is they’re one-of-a-kind,” said Linebrink, a 37-year-old self-proclaimed blockchain nerd.
Digital NFTs are organized at zero cost to the creator, Linebrink said. An additional dollar is added to the price per collectible, which then goes to Passage. Passage Collectibles focuses on event experiences and can be redeemed for physical items, used for VIP access to events and more.
“The problem that I’ve seen in this marketplace is there’s not added value to the end customer,” Linebrink said.
Its first NFT partner is Hollywood-born Dangerous Pinups, featuring pinup art, classic car photography and burlesque films.
Passage’s own NFT Collectibles is in the works, titled “Zombie Buddy,” which will be redeemable for physical artwork commissioned from a horror artist.
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