Small Business Case Study: The Decorating Centre

Background

High Quality and Exclusive Offerings

Founded in 2005, in Burlington, Ontario, The Decorating Centre is a resource centre for furniture and other home goods that exclusively works with interior designers and interior designers. With over 3,500+ interior designers registered with them, this family business operates out of a 25,000-square-foot showroom that is full of customer furniture samples and other high-end products. Nothing is sold from the floor, everything is custom ordered and custom made by designers for their customers. For the Decorating Centre it’s their high quality and exclusive offerings that have made them a success.

Challenge

Receivables Affected by Supply Chain Challenges

Cash flow challenges are one of the most common hurdles that a small business faces, regardless of industry and regardless of success. Although their business has been doing well, the high demand for products, coupled with the worldwide shortage of goods meant that The Decorating Centre was facing unusually long lead times.

Items that previously took 6-8 weeks to get manufactured were suddenly taking 24-26 weeks, resulting in a higher amount of receivables yet to be collected because of those delays. While those sales had been made, as they were waiting for the goods to arrive, those payments had not yet been processed, meaning that their available cash flows were directly affected.

Solution

Fast Financing And A Positive Experience

Working capital from Merchant Growth allowed the Decorating Centre to pay off all of their suppliers as well as their landlord quickly, without the uphill ball or delays that small businesses typically face with banks. Additionally, they were pleased with the flexibility they were offered compared to the rigid options one typically sees with traditional financing.

Another element to their positive experience working with Merchant Growth have been their interactions that they have had with our team. We believe in not only finding the right type of financing solution for each individual customer and their particular needs, but also offering the best experience every step of the process.

Result

Building a Financing Relationship

For Having used funding from Merchant Growth in the past to purchase new inventory, this most recent financing experience highlights their ongoing positive experience working with Merchant Growth. Repeat business with the Decorating Centre is another example of how we truly value building long-term relationships with our merchants.

Looking ahead, sales are continuing to trend updates for The Decorating Centre and they are equally optimistic for the future, both in terms of the continued growth of their businesses as well as with supply chain challenges slowly but surely improving.