Marking a milestone with Mimoza Jakimi, Simplyitickets.com

As part of our first anniversary celebrations for PAX magazine this month, PAXnews.com will be featuring weekly profiles of travel businesses marking a milestone year in 2015. To start off the series, we sit down with Mimoza Jakimi, who is celebrating the fifth anniversary of Simplitickets.com this year.

When Mimoza Jakimi arrived in Canada in November 1998, she had no idea that she would be embarking on a unique career in travel that would last 16 years and counting.

While her story may have taken a much different direction than she had originally envisioned, with plans of working in the clothing business and only staying in Canada for no longer than five years, Jakimi couldn’t be happier these days.

Owner of Simplyitickets.com – a ticket booking agency geared toward travel agents, allowing them to get their clients into some of the hottest events and performances around the world – Jakimi is celebrating the fifth anniversary of her business this year in September.

She began her journey to Toronto in Albania. Growing up in Europe, she recalls dreaming of not only travelling to but also of one day living in North America.

“The reason that I moved to Canada was that I was young and it was an adventure discovering the North American culture,” she recalls. “At that time, I had travelled all over Europe as well as in North America, but my dream was to discover more of North America and see what the culture was about and what makes it unique.”

Travel was not Jakimi’s original choice for a career path; rather, she had been interested in fashion from a young age and pursued her studies in textiles at the University of Tirana in Albania’s capital, landing a job with a men’s clothing company based in Italy. Keeping her sights set on North America, Jakimi travelled to Toronto in 1998 with plans to establish the next phase of her fashion career.

“I was very passionate about fashion and I thought I would do that for the rest of my life,” Jakimi explains. “But after moving to Toronto in November 1998, I started to look for a job and I discovered that the textile and fashion industry wasn’t in Toronto. People were advising me to go to Montreal, but to be honest, I had difficulty learning English at the time and the thought of going to Quebec and learning French seemed like too much. I thought I needed a quick fix, a second career to survive in Canada. That’s when a good friend advised me to study in travel and that’s where I started. I attended a six-month travel training program at a private college; it was a very intense program.”

Through her contacts at the school, Jakimi landed her first job in the industry with Baldwin Travel shortly after graduating. After a few months, she came across an opportunity with Keith Prowse Canada, which eventually set the stage for her very own business. An entertainment booking company in the same vein as Simplyitickets.com, Jakimi worked for Keith Prowse from 1999 until the company closed its doors in August 2010, steadily moving up through the ranks of the business. Jakimi said that the U.K.-based Keith Prowse was a perfect fit, allowing her to bring her European background and North American marketing knowledge to a company that had a similar story.

“Keith Prowse was exactly like Simplyitickets,” Jakimi says, “and during my time there, I learned to do marketing, bookkeeping, trade shows – pretty much, I had my hands fully in the business. My last six years with Keith Prowse, I was the company’s managing director.”

Faced with the company’s closure, Jakimi decided to pursue an earlier dream that had been growing in recent years – of having her own business. She began putting the plan into motion and within mere weeks of Keith Prowse’s closure, Simplyitickets.com was born and ready to fill the space left by her former company – a decision she calls the proudest moment of her career.

“Keith Prowse closed Aug. 20, 2010 and on Sept. 2, I opened Simplyitickets.com,” Jakimi says. “In 12 days I came up with this idea and opened my own business.... I had the travel trade and customers supporting me for so many years at Keith Prowse, I thought they’d be with me. It’s a trust issue and the trust was built out there and on the other side with the suppliers, I had all the connections with all of the producers. I thought to bring this all together and create my own business. Ever since, it’s been an amazing experience and I’m thankful for all the support from the travel trade.”

While many others may have found the prospect of establishing a brand new business in such a short amount of time a daunting one, Jakimi said that in addition to her established industry connections, her parents raised her to take on such challenges.

“I’m from a business family and I take so much from my mom, she’s a businesswoman and it’s in my blood,” Jakimi says proudly. “She has the personality and so do I; I know I’ll be the one passing it on.”

Half a decade later, Simplyitickets.com has grown considerably since its inception, helping travel agents “to fulfill all the needs of their customers with add-on products,” Jakimi says. A quick look at the site reveals a wide range of entertainment, from Broadway musicals and other theatrical performances, to sporting events and tickets for world-renowned galleries and museums.

“It’s a boutique, tailored business in the entertainment field for all travel agents,” she explains. “I’m really happy with where I stand because it’s doing very well.”

Often with success comes a desire and need for new challenges and that feeling is no different for Jakimi. In the near future, the Simplyitickets.com portfolio will be divided and a second web site – ThearticalSeats.com – will go live as a separate business this fall. While Simplyitickets.com will continue to offer access to special events such as Wimbledon, the Edinburgh Tattoo and the Grand Prix exclusively to travel agents, ThearticalSeats.com will focus on the performance aspect of entertainment by offering tickets to international theatres and operas to both the travel industry and the public.

It’s far from the fashion career that she envisioned when flying across the Atlantic en route to Toronto those 16 years ago, but Jakimi today is able to look back on her accomplishments with pride while not losing sight of future goals.

“The business has grown and developed and I’m proud to say I’m working with quite a few programs where I’m the exclusive entertainment supplier. I also work with a number of consortia and I’ve become the preferred supplier to quite a few. In the very near future, it’s going to bring the business to a point where travel agents, tour operators and anyone else who wants to work with us will have a main source for all the events for their customers.

“I saw myself working at Keith Prowse in so many areas trying to build my career, so I told myself I’m not going to stop,” she said.