Events & ticketing · Bickenhill, Solihull
A ticketing system for a show day
at the National Motorcycle Museum.
Crafting Realm runs the Paper Craft & Stamping Show in the museum's ballroom, alongside shows at three other venues. We built the system that sells the tickets, lets people in at the door and keeps every show in one diary — and it replaced a platform that took a fee on every ticket sold.
Venue
Shows in one diary
Live since
Per-ticket platform fee
The problem
A good show, sold through someone else's system
Crafting Realm brings two long-running craft show businesses together under one name: the Paper Craft & Stamping Show at the National Motorcycle Museum and the Sincerely Yours shows at Leigh, Thetford and Newark. Each had its own website, its own list of dates and its own way of selling tickets.
The tickets were sold through a third-party events platform sitting on top of an online store subscription. That means two bills: a monthly fee for the store and a charge on every single ticket. On a five-pound admission a per-ticket fee is a serious share of the price and it grows with every ticket sold — the more successful the show, the more it costs.
It also meant the customer relationship sat with the platform. The organiser did the work of booking the hall, the traders and the publicity, then received a payout and a report.
What we built
Tickets, the door and the diary — in one place
Built on our own site framework, so the parts every website needs were switched on rather than written again and the effort went into the ticketing itself.
One diary for every show
The museum show and the Sincerely Yours shows in a single diary, each with its venue, times, prices and traders, managed once in one admin.
Ticketing that is theirs
Adult, senior and free under-14 tickets, sold through Stripe's own secure checkout. Stripe charges per transaction with no monthly fee, so a family buying three tickets pays one fee rather than three.
Tickets issued properly
A ticket is issued when the payment is confirmed by Stripe, not when the buyer reaches a thank-you page — so closing the browser at the wrong moment never leaves somebody paid with no ticket.
Scanning at the door
A door scanner that runs on an ordinary phone from a web address — no app store — and keeps working with no signal, because a venue's car park and a sports hall are not guaranteed 4G.
The last ticket, sold once
Two people buying the last ticket at the same moment is a real situation at a popular show. That case was tested deliberately rather than hoped about.
Venues done once
Each hall has its own page with directions, parking and access, reused across every date there — an address is corrected once, not thirteen times.
Where it got to
Live, selling and scanning
The new site went live on craftingrealm.co.uk on 18 September 2026. Tickets for the museum show and the other venues have been selling through it since and the door scanner is in use on show days. There is no headline percentage to quote yet and we are not going to invent one.
The case for building rather than renting is the arithmetic. A per-ticket fee is charged on every ticket for as long as the shows run, so it never ends and it grows with success. A build has a cost that finishes. The discipline that made it work was scope: this is ticketing — tickets, payment and the door — not an attempt to recreate an entire events platform.
It is also now part of our framework. The next organiser who needs ticketing gets something already running at a real venue with real queues, rather than a first attempt.
What it runs on
Our own site framework — Node, PostgreSQL, server-rendered pages — on our own servers. A purpose-built ticketing core, Stripe Checkout for payment, a phone-based door scanner that works offline and an admin covering shows, venues, traders and sales.
Paying a fee
on every ticket you sell?
It is worth doing the arithmetic on what that costs over three years. We will do it with you honestly — including when the answer is that the platform you have is cheaper than a build.