About
PHOTO — FABIO, IN THE THEATRE
My name is Fabio Vangelista and since 2012 I have run the Salotto Magico, in Turin: a real theatre, with a real audience, that opens its doors every week.
I am not a software company with a marketing department. I am someone with a theatre who had to build his own software — and who now sells it to people with the same problem.
The system you are looking at is selling tickets for my theatre tonight. If it breaks, I am the first one who pays for it.
I didn’t buy it. It grew in here.
The theatre opened in 2012. I needed a way to sell tickets and I tried what was out there: none of it did enough. They sold the ticket and that was it — then I did the till by hand, the accounts on a spreadsheet, the emails one by one.
So I started building it myself. On a different system, at first. One feature at a time, every time a night showed me something was missing. And when I understood what was really needed, I rebuilt it from scratch on WordPress.
These are not years spent programming. They are years spent in the room, finding out what you need half an hour before the doors open.
PHOTO — THE ROOM WITH THE AUDIENCE
928
shows
35,123
tickets
4,438
guests
since 2012
every week
Almost 8 tickets each. People who come, come back: that is why the loyalty programme is built in, and not a plugin you buy separately.
PHOTO — THE TICKET COUNTER
If one of these sounds like you
«I have forty covers and a wine tasting night: I need to know who is coming and how many, before I buy the wine.»
«I sell tickets over WhatsApp and write them down on a sheet of paper.»
«I have a members’ card, but I have to remember the discount myself every single time.»
«I know what I took at the door. I don’t know whether I made money.»
«Someone comes once and I never hear from them again.»