Performance Ticket Printers has gone out of business. With a heavy heart it has become necessary to shut down PTP as it is no longer financially viable.

In the mid 1980s Keith Arnold, then working at IBM and a keen lover of classical music decided to donate £300 to the Northern Chamber Orchestra. He did so simply to support the music and the musicians he loved but the NCO considered this a sizeable sum and offered him a place on the board. Once he became involved he discovered something else he could do to help them - print their tickets. As an IBM employee Keith was able to obtain IBM PCs and Epson dot matrix printers as well as write the software needed to lay out and print those tickets with sequential numbering or complex seating plans. It was a couple of years later - around 1988 - that Keith decided to leave his job with IBM and set up Performance Ticket Printers selling tickets to all sorts of orchestras, choirs, drama groups and venues around the UK. When he did I was in my first year at university and he sent me a note that read, "I've done it, scrogg, I've resigned from IBM and I'm starting the business". That note was blue-tacked to my wall all through university and is still in a box somewhere here.

The business started in Keith and Joan's home but quickly moved to premises in Brownlow, just outside Congleton, where it remained - a beautiful building that was built around the old forge of the smithy that used to stand there. As the business grew Keith invested and expanded the building - spending some of Joan's inheritance on an extended computer room with a thick soundproof door. Those dot matrix printers were very loud! There were up to 20 PCs and printers running in that room and I remember my dad pointing at the tickets coming out one by one and counting, "That's 2p.. 4p.. 6p..". Keith wrote all that early software and designed the processes for how orders were processed along with what data would be kept, how invoices are created and so on. Much of the bones of what he created survived to this day. In the late 90s we switched to using continuous feed laser printers - quite specialized machines - and throughout this period our methods of cutting the tickets to size changed and evolved several times. Also in that time I finally persuaded Keith to make PTP a limited company and become VAT registered.

Sadly in 2005 Keith passed away at the age of 60 leaving the the business to Joan, his wife, and Ruth and John (me), his children. For many years since then John and Ruth ran the business together with the help of Joan until she passed in 2016. During that period we switched to full colour printing by investing in modern cut sheet printers that could use less specialized stationary. This meant changing our paper cutting process again but gave us the ability to print in full colour, full bleed on up to 300gsm and at that time we also moved into printing vouchers and eventually tyvek wristbands.

Since then the business of tickets has declined due to the rise of e-ticketing. This was offset by the new voucher and wristband business.. Until Covid. Sadly those Covid shutdowns killed every little bit of our business for more than a year and the return of events has been slow. We furloughed our staff throughout, keeping people receiving a salary as long as we were able to but eventually we were forced to let all but one of our staff go. And despite the reduced costs the reduced business was even greater. We have struggled on as long as possible, the directors have put a lot of money in to keep it going and taken no rent or salary for a long time. But sadly we've run out of money.

Performance Ticket Printers at its height was generating roughly £250,000 turnover in a year. It employed up to 5 staff and we printed literally millions of tickets including doing work for the BBC, The Edinburgh Fringe, The Royal Northern College of Music, The National Trust and, of course, The Northern Chamber Orchestra.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful people who worked for PTP over the years, especially Austin, Mike, Pip, Mo and Helen.

Our approach has always been to work with our customers, to provide direct access to the staff printing your order, to check and double check the details on the tickets and if anything goes wrong to re-print without complaint. Our business was to make your organization look good. It has been our privilege to work with and support all of you. Thank you.

With kindest regards,
John Arnold