Background

This was a family-owned grocery business trading for less than 2 years.
They were in the black, with £1 million in revenues every year.
Month to month, there were high fluctuations in revenue of up to £40k.
The owners were using 80–90% of the £20k overdraft protection provided by their bank.
The owners rented their home and had no other debts.

Funding request

The shop owners were looking to completely renovate the store and back office.
They asked for £200K of unsecured funding with a fixed monthly payments and fixed interest rate.

How we helped them RISE

We started by helping the owners understand what lenders are looking for, and how their young business, lack of home ownership, high overdraft utilisation, and high revenue fluctuation weakened their position.

We still approached our network of lenders to explore options for the family. Within a few days, we had offers of £30k over 6 months and £90k over 12 months – both well short of their expectations.

We supported the family through the disappointment and put together two alternative plans:

1) Take one of the loans on offer to begin their store renovation project, and work through our plan to improve their appeal to lenders so that they could get the rest of the funding after their next accounts filings.

2) Hold off taking any financing options until they have worked through our business plan and have two full years of accounts to share with lenders. This would give them more options and better rates across the whole finance package.

The client decided that their store refit could wait until they were in a position to get the best rates for the full loan.They felt they fully understood the funding process and the simple changes they could make behind the scenes to widen their options.

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