- Sarah Beattie’s full-time nursery and children’s franchise holiday clubs reopened after first COVID-19 lockdown
- Furlough and various loan schemes kept business going and provided cushion of finance when facing uncertainty
- External investment now secured for new children's nursery franchise
Financial confidence has helped a children's nursery and holiday club franchise business to overcome the first COVID-19 lockdown and to launch a new nursery franchise in 2021.
Sarah Beattie, founder and managing director of Fun Fest holiday clubs and Day Care at St Martin's nursery, was initially forced to close her sites when the pandemic struck.
But with the help of the government's furlough, the Coronavirus Business Interruption (CBIL) and Bounce Back Loans schemes, plus support through Aston Business School’s Small Business Growth Programme, she survived and is now planning to grow again.
Sarah was talking about her experiences in the latest podcast in a series called ‘Aston means business: SMEs building resilience to COVID-19 challenges’, presented by journalist Steve Dyson.
She previously spoke in an earlier podcast last spring of having to close all 24 Fun Fest children's holiday club franchises, as well as her separate full-time Day Care at St Martin's nursery in Solihull.
Sarah, who also relied on her Birmingham-based company reserves to keep going, said most franchises survived and were doing “very well”.
She said: “We opened about 20 of our 24 clubs, so we're really happy with that. I'm not going to pretend it was easy, it took a lot of hard work, but I have an amazing team in head office and we had the mindset that we were going to open.
“I am really conscious that the franchisees had invested a lot of money and it’s my job as the franchisor to protect their business to help them get through this situation.”
Sarah explained how she taught the franchisees how to operate in small bubbles, made sure staff wore face masks, and introduced safety measures and training plans.
“We put videos onto our website along with policies and procedures about how we were going to operate safely, to give parents the confidence that their children would be as safe as possible. And parents did actually send their children in droves.”
Sarah said they got through the whole of 2020 with only one case of coronavirus in their clubs. “We managed to weather the storm pretty well and are continuing to open the clubs with all the safety measures in place, operating in small bubbles. The margins are really squeezed at the moment, but it’s more about keeping the clubs open.”
Sarah used what she called the “life-saver” furlough scheme and CBIL loan funding to help Fun Fest survive, stripping back all their marketing costs and non-essential expenditure, although she still managed to grow the business in 2020.
She added: “We have a growth plan in place, our marketing spend will be turned on again, and we can now look forward to recruiting more franchisees and grow the business again."
The separate Day Care at St Martin's nursery, which employs nearly 30 people, also closed in March, but opened five weeks later for key workers’ children before fully re-opening in September. Sarah accessed the Bounce Back Loan as a “cushion” in case COVID-19 caused more issues.
Despite the first lockdown, Sarah went ahead with plans to start a new franchise business called Canopy Day Nurseries, and the first franchise is now due to open in London in September 2021.
Sarah again used CBIL funding plus external financing for Canopy and said: “I had the confidence from the Aston programme to work with an external investor. The whole of the Aston cohort has been an amazing support network during the problems of 2020 and still are."
Martin Potts, a senior lecturer in the Accounting department at Aston Business School, was also interviewed for the podcast. He praised Sarah for her “financial literacy” that gave her the confidence to plan and use the correct government funding for the right reasons.
He explained how any small business leader should be closely monitoring finances through a “working capital cycle” to give them an “early warning system” of emerging issues.
Martin said: “Be proactive and monitor a dashboard regularly, anticipate problems and think about using funding in an appropriate way, matching the type of finance to the type of use.”
▪ Episode 4 of ‘Aston means business’ podcast is available now
ENDS
- Notes to editors
Founded in 1895 and a University since 1966, Aston is a long-established university led by its three main beneficiaries – students, business and the professions, and our region and society. Aston University is located in Birmingham and at the heart of a vibrant city and the campus houses all the university’s academic, social and accommodation facilities for our students. Professor Alec Cameron is the Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive.
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