For theatre school operator Make Believe, cash and check payments were a constant headache, and additional finance was needed to enable growth. GoCardless helped with both.
for Capital powered by Pipe funding to reach account.
Payments and finance, without the drama
Make Believe runs theatre schools and production companies, with 5,500 children taking part every week across 50 sites.
“Whilst it's amazing to get a kid a role in the West End or a TV show, really it's about that little boy or girl who won't even say hello to you because they’re so immensely shy, then six months down the line singing a solo in front of their parents in the hall,” said Joel Kern, Founder, Make Believe.
“I’m a firm believer in everyone having that chance,” he said. To that end, his company charges half the price of its competitors to make drama accessible to more families, and he has ambitious growth plans, so he can reach more communities.
GoCardless has helped with both, by improving Make Believe’s customer experience with smoother payments and providing access to funding through Capital powered by Pipe.
Streamlining payments
“Back in the day, it was all cash and check,” said Joel. “We’d have queues of people. I laugh now, but it was an administrative nightmare. Then GoCardless came along and we moved into the Direct Debit world, which has completely transformed our business."
A quick transaction of filling out a Direct Debit mandate or filling it in online makes life so much easier for customers, and for Make Believe as a business.
GoCardless now processes more than 2,000 payments per month for Make Believe.
Why did Joel choose GoCardless over traditional banking methods? “When you’re dealing with a bank, sometimes things take a little bit longer,” he said. “GoCardless has got the resources, the facilities, and the people behind it to make things a lot more seamless for business owners. If we’re having trouble, being able to speak to our Customer Success Manager makes life so much easier.”
GoCardless has also made life a lot easier for Joel when it comes to failed payments, specifically Success+, which automatically retries any failed payments.
“Success+ has driven down Make Believe’s failed payments from 9% to between 1% and 2%,” he said. “Reducing failed payments has significantly improved cash flow. It’s also enabled us to help our customers pay for things more easily, without us having those difficult conversations when payments fail.”
Driving growth with funding
Capital powered by Pipe is a GoCardless service that helps businesses grow by giving them access to funding based on business performance, as measured by GoCardless transactions. Repayments are then set at a percentage of revenue collected.
This has helped Make Believe when opening new schools, which takes four to six months to make sustainable long-term, given the costs of renting facilities, recruiting and training staff, and marketing.
“Capital powered by Pipe has definitely accelerated our growth,” said Joel. “Over the course of the last two years, we’ve introduced another 10 to 15 sites, and that’s been enabled by Capital.”
Joel completed a couple of forms, spoke to his account manager, and was then quickly approved by the due diligence team at Pipe. “We requested some cash, and it was in our account within about 24 to 48 hours,” said Joel.
Because he could spend more on marketing, the new school in Acton, West London, launched with about 20 students, with an expected increase to 60 in three weeks. Previously, schools might start with 5.
The growth with any school now is faster because of that capital. It’s helped change the trajectory of where Make Believe is going over the next 12 to 24 months.
The funding has also enabled Make Believe to employ more regional development managers, who Joel describes as “the faces of the sites we operate”.
The GoCardless advantage
In the last 24 months, Make Believe has doubled the number of transactions going through GoCardless. Joel looks forward to further growth with GoCardless in the future.
What I really like about GoCardless is the seamlessness of it. It's easy to use, it's user friendly. All the people have always been there to help, and we’ve never had a problem, which has been great.
