Have you ever ever wished to problem your self to study a brand new scary talent? Extremely Occasions gives on a regular basis folks the chance to enroll in eight weeks of free coaching to study boxing, MMA combating, or stand-up comedy — after which carry out their new talent on an enormous stage, at a glamorous occasion, in entrance of as many as 1,000 folks.
Extremely Occasions has a singular consumer journey: Contributors signal on for eight weeks of free coaching to arrange them for his or her closing occasion, whether or not that’s a boxing match, an MMA battle, or a stand-up comedy efficiency. After that eight weeks is up, individuals are requested to decide to promoting no less than 10 tickets to family and friends to come back out and watch their occasion stay.
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 through 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. Nevertheless, 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 have been capable of stand up and operating pretty shortly,” Ashley says. “It was a sliding scale transfer, beginning with our smaller occasions and testing the setup, earlier than shifting all the things over.”
Right now, their enterprise has seen super year-over-year progress in gross sales, together with tripling their gross sales after COVID-19, and seeing as much as 60 orders per second throughout peak promoting intervals. A hundred percent of tickets are offered by way of their Woo retailer.
Industries: Occasions, Sports activities
Key merchandise: WooCommerce
Key outcomes:
- Constantly sees double-digit YoY progress in gross sales.
- Elevated gross sales by 500% in 4 years.
- Processes as much as 60 orders per second throughout peak occasion intervals.
- 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 individuals are accountable for getting tickets offered, Ashley says Extremely’s advertising efforts give attention to growing signal ups for this system itself, and supporting individuals by way of 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 accordance with Ashley, the rationale for Extremely’s progress is essentially because of this emphasis on the shopper expertise. He additionally credit their improve in occasions throughout their three manufacturers. They’ve added greater than 350 extra occasions since 2022 alone. Additionally they upped their ante by turning into ISO licensed to make sure they adhere to a set of strict requirements throughout all of their occasions. Extremely Occasions is one among few occasions firms within the UK to carry this certification.
Right now, throughout peak occasion intervals, Extremely’s web site will see as many as 60 orders per second. This can be a big feat, however elevated site visitors doesn’t come with out its personal challenges. To mitigate a number of the pressure on their web site throughout these high-traffic instances, they just lately launched a digital ready room system that enables as much as 20 customers a minute onto the location 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 need to undergo. Fairly than being met with a sluggish 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 neighborhood imply that it doesn’t matter what venture you’re engaged on, likelihood is there’s another person that has completed the identical. Do you have to want any assist alongside the construct of your tasks, it makes it very straightforward to seek out.”— Ashley Gordon
Ashley describes himself as firmly “Workforce Woo.” Ever since studying WooCommerce, Ashley doesn’t think about using some other ecommerce platform. “Any new venture I work on, my first thought is, ‘Can I obtain this utilizing WordPress and WooCommerce?’”
One of many largest positives to growing with Woo is the built-in neighborhood, able to step in and assist one another.
“The scale of the consumer base and neighborhood imply that it doesn’t matter what venture you’re engaged on, likelihood is there’s another person that has completed the identical. Do you have to want any assist alongside the construct of your tasks, it makes it very straightforward to seek out,” Ashley says.
For them, success appears like persevering with to develop their enterprise and improve sign-ups to their applications. It additionally means their prospects are given a easy journey by way of this system, and their family and friends can purchase tickets with ease. “All of that is made doable resulting from WordPress and WooCommerce making life as a developer a lot simpler, and the good assist on provide,” he says.
Thus far, 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 progress.
Charitable fundraising is a part of the settlement individuals decide to when signing up for this system. Along with selling ticket gross sales all through their eight-week journey, individuals are additionally requested to fundraise for a charity of their selection.
Extremely Occasions is at the moment working occasions within the UK and, as of 2023, Canada — however they’ve huge 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, at the moment in English, however taking a look at 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 operating 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 forex on provide: GBP, CAD, USD, and EUR.
They’ve been growing a second launch of their ticketing platform. In accordance with Ashley, the principle distinction is lowering their reliance on third-party plugins and doing quite a lot of {custom} growth 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 believe 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.