SME helps client meet goals for growth

Soccer Apparel Supplies Ltd (SAS) is a bespoke clothing importer, specialising in soccer merchandising. It ships high fashion, highly branded products into the UK and sells them to the major football clubs. Ambitious to grow the business beyond the confines of the top four divisions of the football league, the directors of the company have recently broadened the offering to appeal to the corporate market, importing top brands such as Rizla and Cobra, and it intends to continue to develop this customer base.

In addition to the working capital requirements for on-going expansion, the nature of the business model necessitates external funding. Marc Cohen, the business owner explains, “Football clubs are notoriously slow payers, and the credit cycle would be a big stretch without finance. Factoring is perfect in this situation. In our case, we also require additional funding because payment for imports is often required four or five months before the goods even enter the country, and delivery can be another four weeks after this.”

With finance so integral to its business model, SAS clearly needs to feel confident that they can rely on their funders. Reluctantly, the directors decided that they were unhappy with their existing factors. Mr Cohen continues, “It’s very stressful to switch providers, you don’t want to, but the bank we had an arrangement with were too rigid in their application of the rules and they weren’t lending enough. What should have been an 80% advance rate was more like 50% in practice.

“We were referred to SME Invoice Finance by our accountant, who had received good feedback from another of his clients. Our initial meeting with SME was very positive and we were impressed that a director met up with us which showed that they were serious about supporting our business”. They were genuinely interested in our business and how it worked. They were both football fans as well, which helped!”

“Right from the start, we had a good positive feeling about SME; it felt like a partnership, not as though they were obsessed with following rules and covering their backs the whole time. You don’t want that, you want people who’ll work with you and we have that with SME. We feel that they believe in our business, and would push the boundaries within reason. A flexible approach is important in a funder, because there’s so much you can’t plan for.”

Mr Cohen comments, “Making the move to SME Invoice Finance has definitely improved the overall availability of funding to SAS. Importantly, I can talk to the people there; they have the personal touch. They listen to my requests, instead of simply trotting out a list of rules.”

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