“I love working with a team and I feel like my job is to ensure they have what they need so everything goes well,” says Guislaine Bulman.
Guislaine Bulman, BComm 92, may not portray herself as a pioneer in her field, but it was her initiative and ingenuity more than 25 years ago that helped revolutionize the way we purchase event tickets.
Back in 1998, when she was working at Montreal’s Théâtre St-Denis as a manager in the ticketing department, Bulman suggested the idea of online ticketing.
“My boss wasn’t interested in online ticket sales,” she recalls, “but that’s when I learned that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”
Her bold business decision is characteristic of her confidence as president of Ticketpro, a ticketing software powerhouse in Montreal with a presence in almost every province. Venues use Ticketpro to sell tickets and manage inventory. From the Harvest Music Festival in New Brunswick to comedy shows in Ontario to dance recitals in Alberta, Ticketpro customers dot the country.
Bulman says that leading 25 staffers who regularly communicate with hundreds of event managers and venues is a fulfilling role. “I love working with a team and I feel like my job is to ensure they have what they need so everything goes well,” she says.
She recognized the value of helping others when she was growing up in Quebec City and dreaming of being an Olympic-level figure skater. She soon levelled-up to become a young skating teacher. “I realize now what a huge responsibility that was at that age, and I think that taught me a lot about being responsible,” Bulman says.
When she enrolled at Concordia, a major draw was the opportunity to find her independence. “Being the youngest of seven kids, I was always supervised, so to do what I wanted and make decisions for myself was really appealing to me,” says Bulman, who majored in international business.
From master to pro
Soon after graduating from Concordia, she began working at Ticketmaster but after two years, the company decided to close shop in Montreal. Bulman then moved to the ticketing office at Théâtre St-Denis.
“There, I began to understand the ins and outs of how ticket selling worked and what went into a successful call centre,” Bulman says. “It was a lot of work but one of the things I like about ticketing is that you kind of touch on everything — like how I made the theatre’s first website.”
Bulman also began to recognize the perspectives — sometimes thorny — of ticket buyers vying to see their favourite show. “I learned early on that people felt entitled to a ticket, and if it was sold out, we had to remind them about limited tickets and how there could be thousands of people in line for 200 tickets,” she recalls.
Lately, some controversy has swirled over the high ticket pricing and availability issues at Ticketmaster. She says, "As a company, Ticketpro does not control pricing or pricing strategies, nor do we operate our own platform on the secondary market. We adhere to the producer's guidelines regarding ticket pricing and availability."
The theatre soon acquired Ticketpro, a ticketing business founded by a French-Canadian producer with headquarters in Prague, and since 2019 Bulman has helmed the company as president.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, business cratered but Ticketpro didn’t venture into the virtual ticket space to which many artists had migrated. “We found that most artists were doing these things for free, and customers were reluctant to spend $20 on an online show,” Bulman says.
But from the crisis of lockdown arose a new opportunity: The City of Quebec called Bulman. It was running free activities outdoors but they needed a ticketed solution to ensure that, for example, 20 people weren’t on the ice rink at the same time, due to social distancing restrictions. “Within three weeks of that phone call, we were up and running,” she says.
Within the past three years, Bulman has seen her share of business highs and lows. “In 2022, we had a banner year for events to rebound, but 2023 saw a downward trend as wallets tightened, and we again saw a rebound in the latter half of 2024,” she says. “But I hope that will change going forward.”