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How This Retail Specialist Survived and Thrived During COVID-19

Clothing Rack of High-End Clothes

Written by Garrett Baldwin

Franchiser of Must Boutique Stores Gives FundThrough Two Perfect Reviews for Invoice Funding Solutions.

 

Many small business owners have similar memories after the economy’s first shutdown due to COVID-19. Questions about how to pay employees, pay off expenses, and survive several months without revenue rattled companies all across Canada.

 

One of the hardest-hit industries by COVID was the retail sector. With malls and shopping centers shutting down, the flow of foot traffic hit brick-and-mortar locations and forced them to reevaluate their business models. Concept Media is a franchisor of the trendy retailer Must Boutique. The firm’s founder buys goods wholesale in Italy and sells them in their branded stores. Two of the franchises had been with Concept Media for six years.

 

With three franchises shut down in Canada for more than two months, Concept’s founder Eddie Malka faced a significant cash crunch at the onset of the shutdown. Due to social-distancing rules, the company was legally not allowed to open their stores, which meant they had no opportunity to generate cash flow. There was no income and no sales.

 

Concept Media was doing all it could to not put any pressure on its franchises. The company had an existing $500,000 loan with his bank. However, he needed to hire an additional employee just to stay on top of what was needed to work with the financial institution. Eddie’s team was looking at other financing options, but the bulk of them would have resulted in more debt and more hassles.

 

That’s when Concept Media discovered FundThrough, a unique financing company that allows companies to self-fund their operations by using existing customer invoices.

“More funding companies should be like FundThrough,” Eddie said. Entrepreneurs are very busy and no one has time for complicated funding options anymore.”

“Even though it might appear expensive at first, it’s a lot cheaper than using a bank and far less paperwork. It’s much easier and more practical working with FundThrough.”

Eddie Malka

Working with FundThrough and using existing invoices, Eddie saw fees that were much lower than hiring an employee to handle the banking process. 

“It would have been a disaster if [FundThrough] didn’t help us,” he said. “Even though it might appear expensive at first, it’s a lot cheaper than using a bank and far less paperwork. It’s much easier and more practical working with FundThrough.”

FundThrough worked with Concept Media to provide flexible payment terms during COVID.  These terms allowed Concept Media to increase its transaction rate so that vendors could extend their payment terms.

“When we reopened, our stores were almost immediately able to pay back more than half of what they owed in invoices,” Eddie said. “We’re on track to having them all paid back by the end of June [2020].”

Eddie recommends FundThrough’s newest invoice factoring product Velocity since it provides greater access to more funding. Eddie also provided FundThrough with a perfect review on both Google and NPS.

The Google Review reads: “Started to deal with FundThrough for a little while now. I must say they have an amazing team with a very quick response to solving any issue, which is not every lender’s priority. And their rates are much better. A great company to deal with.”

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