Jonny White Bought Back Ticket Tailor and Built It into a Larger Business

Jonny White is the founder of Ticket Tailor, which helps event organizers sell tickets online and manage attendees. He sold the product he had started alone to Time Out, then bought it back and grew it into a team business funded by its own earnings. The central point of this case is less about developing a product alone than about reclaiming ownership and then choosing how the business should grow.

A Feature Freelance Clients Kept Asking For

The starting point was “What's On in Brum?”, a local events listing site White ran while at university in 2005. Running the site repeatedly showed him that event organizers needed an affordable ticketing tool. Rather than building a product first and then looking for a market, he discovered the problem through working with event information.

Later, as a web developer building sites for clients in the music industry, he encountered the same need more directly. Several clients asked him to build ticket sales websites, and the high per-ticket fees charged by existing ticketing agencies were a burden. Instead of building a separate system for each client, White decided to create a shared platform that could be configured for different events.

Ticket Tailor launched in 2010 after around three months of development, with Brickhouse Cabaret Club as its first customer. White began working on the business full-time in 2011. When sources give either 2010 or 2011 as the founding year, it is therefore more accurate to distinguish the product's launch from his move to working on it full-time.

Selling and Buying Back the Business at an Early Stage

After the early business reached around £2,000 in monthly recurring revenue, White sold Ticket Tailor to the global culture and events publication Time Out in 2012. This was an ownership transfer at a relatively early stage, after demand from paying customers had been established, rather than a large exit after building a huge company. The public sources reviewed do not disclose the sale price.

Under Time Out's ownership, however, the business stagnated, and White bought the company back in 2014. Indie Bites describes his aim as building a business that supported the way he wanted to live and work. Buying it back was more than an investment transaction: it restored his authority to make decisions about the product and his working life.

Regaining independence did not mean continuing to do everything alone. A customer support employee joined in the year of the buyback, and in 2018–2019 the team grew from six to twelve people. After reaching the point where the business supported his livelihood, he chose to hire people and expand the product.

Charging per Ticket Sold Rather than a Percentage of Its Price

Ticket Tailor's core product is an online box office that organizers configure for their own events. They can create a standalone sales page or add ticket sales to an existing website, and set ticket types, prices, discounts, and seating. Order confirmations and information emails, attendee management, and admission checks at the venue are connected to handle recurring tasks both before and after ticket sales.

The key to its pricing is a fee for each ticket sold, rather than a percentage of the ticket's face value. The official UK pound prices checked on October 1, 2026, were £0.60 per ticket on a pay-as-you-sell basis, or as low as £0.22 with advance purchases, depending on volume, excluding VAT. With the same number of tickets sold, a higher ticket price does not proportionally increase the platform's basic fee, which can make it more favorable than percentage-based fees for expensive events.

Advance pricing works through credits purchased before use. One ordinary paid ticket uses one credit, reserved seating requires additional credits, and purchased credits do not expire. Because there is no ongoing monthly subscription fee, the model can also suit seasonal or occasional events.

The platform fee must be distinguished from payment processing fees. Organizers connect their Stripe, PayPal, or Square accounts to receive sales proceeds and pay the processor's fees separately. Ticket Tailor does not hold the sales proceeds itself and release them after the event; the timing of deposits into a bank account depends on the connected payment processor.

Leaving customer relationships with the organizer is another important distinction. The company says it does not use ticket buyers' information to promote other events and maintains that buyer data belongs to the organizer. From a business perspective, it emphasizes being a sales tool that helps organizers retain their own brands and customers, rather than a platform that also takes ownership of the relationship with the audience.

Small-Team Operations and the Response to the Pandemic

External payment infrastructure played an important role in reducing the operational burden. According to a Stripe case study, Ticket Tailor found that the payment setup stage had the highest customer drop-off, adopted Connect to simplify onboarding, and had one developer work on the integration in 2014. White estimated that using payment information storage and fraud detection features reduced the workload of compliance and fraud management by the equivalent of one full-time employee. This is an operational estimate stated by the founder, rather than a result measured by the company.

They also created an incentive for referrals to acquire customers. The official partner program checked on October 1, 2026, pays existing users, web agencies, consultants, and others 20% of the Ticket Tailor fees generated by customers they refer. This is 20% of the platform fee excluding taxes, not 20% of ticket sales proceeds, and rewards continue for as long as the referred customer keeps using the service. It gives businesses already working with event organizers a financial reason to recommend the product.

The cost of focusing on particular industries became clear during COVID-19. According to reporting on that period, ticket sales on Ticket Tailor fell by 90% almost overnight in March 2020. This refers to the decline in ticket sales on the platform, not a 90% drop in the company's revenue, but it shows the risk that demand for the service shrinks when customers' events stop.

Unexpected customer segments emerged during the recovery. Visitor farms, corn mazes, flower fields open to tourists, and outdoor play facilities created new demand by adopting online booking instead of selling admission on site. White explained that they improved time-slot bookings, peak and off-peak pricing, and quick admission checks to meet these customers' needs. Rather than only waiting for the live performance market to recover, they adapted the product to other industries that needed the same ticketing technology.

How to Interpret £6 Million in ARR

The introduction to an Indie Bites interview published on September 4, 2023, described Ticket Tailor as a business with more than £6 million in ARR and a team of more than twenty people. However, it did not provide the method used to calculate ARR or accounting records to verify it. The figure must therefore not be relabeled as actual annual revenue for 2023, net profit, or White's personal income. It must also be distinguished from the total transaction value paid by ticket buyers, while bearing in mind that the current product charges by sales volume rather than a monthly subscription.

The official timeline records more than 18 million tickets issued in 2023 and 25 million in 2024, and lists thirty full-time employees in 2024. Ticket issuance shows the scale of operations, but because the service also offers free tickets, it cannot all be treated as paid sales. By this point, Ticket Tailor was a company with organized development and customer support, rather than a solo developer's side business.

Setting Goals Beyond the Founder's Livelihood

After the pandemic, the management team revisited the purpose of growth in a strategy workshop and developed an approach called “Growth on Purpose.” The aim was to consider effects on customers, employees, communities, and the environment alongside increasing revenue. The company gained B Corp certification, which assesses social and environmental performance and accountability, in 2022, and passed recertification in 2025.

This approach took practical form through “Penny for the Planet,” which donates one penny to climate-related organizations for every ticket sold. On October 5, 2023, beneficiary Cumbria Wildlife Trust said it had received around £67,000 from Ticket Tailor up to that point. White and employees also took part in wetland restoration work, providing a basis for examining the company's stated commitments alongside its actual activities.

White's case shows that independence and operating alone are different concepts. He regained autonomy by buying back the company, but hired people and divided responsibilities as it grew. More important than having started alone is that he ran the business in a way that allowed him to keep deciding for whom and how it should grow, even as it became larger.