How music club N9 found room to grow with Stager

In Eeklo, East Flanders, you’ll find music club N9—a place that consciously chooses its own path. With a strong focus on world music and carefully curated line-ups, N9 is committed to offering a diverse program. But that is easier said than done. Just ask Sander Wouters, who works in production at N9 and saw firsthand how a strong operation can quickly become entangled in a confusing web of tools and processes.

Until early 2023, the team worked with a colorful mix of Excel files, endless email threads, Dropbox folders, and a standalone ticketing system. Everything had its place, but it felt like a house of cards: one wrong click and chaos was lurking around the corner. Then came January 2023. The switch to Stager became a reality.

A new era of clarity: centralized, streamlined, and stress-free 

As a key figure in production, Sander was the person to set up Stager at N9. Together with Stager’s customer success team, he aligned everything with their operations: configuring settings, creating templates, and getting to know the system inside out. After that, it was up to him to get his colleagues on board.

The booker learned how to manage artists and contracts, volunteers started using the planning system, and marketing and ticketing were handled entirely through Stager. And that big transition? It went surprisingly smoothly.

"The switch was really easy," says Sander. "Stager is super user-friendly. The entire back office looks good, is clear, and contains everything you need—without unnecessary clutter. Other software I’ve worked with is often much more complex."

Where you previously had to constantly switch between tabs, spreadsheets, and emails to check something, everything is now neatly in one place. A simple question like "Is the backline arranged?" no longer has to end in an endless search through shared folders or—ironically—an email to the colleague sitting right next to you. Now? It’s all in there. No more copying or searching. For Sander and N9, it just works.

More time for what matters

Thanks to Stager, the workflow at N9 has been significantly simplified, and that brought something precious: time. "Recently, Stager has also been fully integrated into our new website, www.n9.be. All events are automatically synced, so we only have to enter information once. That saves us a lot of extra time."

They’ve put that time to good use. Since switching to Stager, they have managed to significantly scale up their outdoor concert series, In de Huysmanhoeve. The series is growing rapidly, and the 2025 edition is already sold out.

Previously, a festival of that scale was hardly feasible. Too much time was lost on repetitive, manual tasks. "With Stager, the templates and tools are already there," Sander explains. "The booker easily adds options, the production planning is pre-filled, and the staff schedule is quick to create. Once an event is set up, we don’t have to email anyone separately to schedule them."

The result? More time to focus on growth, content, and quality. More space to put together a strong line-up. More energy to make every event better than the last. N9 didn't just choose new software; they changed their entire way of working. And that is exactly why they were able to grow in a way that wasn't possible before.