In 1990, Doug Crothers, President of Guaranteed Software Execution (GSE) was hired as a consultant for the Toledo Symphony Orchestra to assess their existing system capabilities and look for a computerized ticketing solution. Doug researched the market and presented several options to the Symphony, none of which they found acceptable. Further discussion led the Symphony to ask Doug's company to create a customized ticketing package for their sophisticated subscription and single ticketing campaign.
Within a year GSE developed and installed a computerized ticketing system designed to run on PC networks that satisfied all of the Symphony's ticketing requirements. After completing this assignment, Doug was convinced this software application could benefit other arts and athletic organizations with needs similar to the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and embarked on the campaign to market this software with an emphasis on providing a high end product at an economical price. From his efforts, Choice Ticketing Systems was born in 1991.
Written in FoxPro, a very powerful PC database language, Choice Ticketing was first sold as a DOS product. It was well received in the marketplace as a ticketing package that had the look and feel of the Mac, but the speed of DOS. Soon after its initial release, Choice developed an integrated Fundraising module to complement the Ticketing module. Eventually integrated Membership and Volunteer Management modules were also added. With the introduction of Visual FoxPro, Choice developed and is now selling Choice Ticketing for Windows, a true 32 Bit Windows application. This version of Choice Ticketing, which was released in the first quarter of 1999, greatly accelerated the company's growth by allowing Choice to be run on any Windows desktop (from Windows 95 to Windows XP to Windows 7) any PC network system including Windows NT/2000/2003/2008, Novell and Linux networks.
Choice Ticketing is now being utilized at more than 230 sites and has become "the logical choice" for mid-sized performing arts, sports and entertainment organizations.
