Possible use · Ladder, one door and three steps

Everything must go.

A going-out-of-business clearance on a wet Manhattan sidewalk. 99% off, one register, one door — and a line that cannot all come in at once. Here is the shape that night needs, and every screen that ran it.

The same crowd, twice

One way in, and three hundred people who know it.

Both of these are a good night — the store is full either way. The difference is whether the people who are not next have to stand there to keep their place.

A crowd pressed against the windows of an electronics store on a wet New York street

Everyone presses toward the glass With nothing holding their place, standing at the front is the place. The line becomes a wall across the sidewalk, and it keeps growing at the end nobody can see.

The same storefront with a roped pen, a Next Up sign and an orderly line

Only the next twenty-five are here One pen, one sign, and the people in it are the ones about to go in. Everybody else is holding their place somewhere warmer, with a phone that tells them when to come back.

The first decision

Ladder or Lanes?

It is not about your industry — it is about how many ways in there are. Here there is one: they go inside. One door, one register, one room with a limit. That is a Ladder, and the steps are the stages of getting through the door.

Ladder

One door

Waves climb toward a single entrance. A shop that holds 25 and a crowd of 304 — people move up a step at a time until they are the ones going in.

One queue, several stages of getting into it
Right when the limit is the room
The pass says how close they are, not where to go

This drop needs this

Lanes

Many spots

Several stations open at once, each its own line. Right for four tables handing things out — wrong here, because there is only one place to be.

Several ways in, all open at the same time
Right when the limit is how fast hands move

The second decision

Three steps, twenty-five at a time.

A step does not have to be a place. Outside is the sidewalk, Next Up is the pen by the door, and Inside Store is the shop itself — and only the last one has a hard limit. Twenty-five is what the room holds, so twenty-five is the step.

The board with all three steps loaded and Open the only live button

Jammed, and the board says so All three steps are full, so the only thing that can happen is the top one emptying. Open is the one live button; the step below it reads Inside Store is full instead of offering a move that cannot happen.

The Add sheet: random or first here, which list, and how many

Who gets picked, and how many 130 waiting, 25 going in. Random is a fair draw and First here rewards the people who turned up at dawn — your call, per wave. Nobody is told anything until you tap the button.

What a guest holds

A pass that is theirs, and yours.

They sign up from the window, a flyer or a story, and the pass lives on their phone for the rest of the night. It carries your artwork, not ours.

Name, number, done Two fields and a consent box. The banner above it is the store's own, so the first thing a guest sees is the sale, not our software.

A called pass reading Get in line, wave W6, ticket A17

Wave 6. Ticket A17. GET IN LINE · move to the door, you are next in. The ticket sorts twenty-five people into an order without anybody directing traffic, and the QR is what the doorman scans.

One line, three steps, and a phone that says which one you are on.

What it looked like after

150 through. 40 who never came.

The numbers below are the real ones from this drop — and the useful one is the last. Forty people signed up and never turned up, which on a clipboard is forty gaps you only find by shouting names at a crowd.

Metrics: 57% finished, 304 signed up, 150 through, 5 waves, 40 never showed

Where the night went 304 signed up, 150 through the door, 5 waves of 25. It also says where they came from — the plain link, the early-bird link, VIP, staff — and that 179 of them checked in during the 8pm hour.

The store's own going-out-of-business artwork at the bottom of the pass

The bottom of every pass Your card, your link, your sale — on the one screen every guest has open all night. A queue ticket is the dullest thing at an event, and it is still worth making good.

Set one up the same way.

Build it, test it with ten signups, and pay only when you go live.

Build a drop free The other use cases