First things first!! We want to thank all of our clients over the past 30 years for choosing Center Stage as your choice in ticketing and box office software.
Thirty years in the software business is a very long time. We’ve seen many software and ticketing companies come and go, but we’re still here!
When we first started business in October of 1985 as Center Stage Ticketing, our community needed some place to go to find out about what was happening in the performing arts.
People didn’t know about all the hard working theatres in the area who were producing high quality theatrical, musical, and dance performances. Once Center Stage Ticketing took the stage, we provided our local community and beyond a place fans could not only purchase tickets, but also learn how to support their favorite performing arts venues.
For those of us old enough to remember the 1980s, the operating system at the time was DOS. Microsoft was just beginning to influence the way we do things today. While we at Center Stage Ticketing were learning all the details in running an efficient box office operation, we developed our own ticketing software and sold our first software application in 1988 to the University of California Santa Cruz. The rest is history.
Why did we choose to develop our own software application? Back in the ’80s, the only companies around for ticketing were Ticketron, Bass Tickets, Ticketmaster and Mistix (for California State Parks tickets). These systems proved to be too expensive and unwieldy for the live theatrical type venues. We discovered there was a market for the non-profit and for-profit community theatres to be able to sell and print their own tickets. As the internet became available in the ’90s, our clients began selling reserved seats as well as general admission seats, selling season subscriptions, generating more reports, and keeping better track of their advertising dollars.
Through many technological advances, one thing has remained the same for Center Stage Software: We strive to develop technology not for technology’s sake, but rather to enable our clients to provide greater customer service for their patrons.
Here’s to many more years!