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I want to take you back to Monday 23rd March 2020. This was a very different
day in our company as all our clients were closed down, retail sector, visitor
attractions, venues and events. We heard a new word – LOCKDOWN!
What to do? Roshi came to the rescue with the furlough scheme and allowed
us to send employees home and he would pay them 80% of their wages. What
about the business? Effectively that was put into mothballs as we were
prohibited from performing any activities that constituted company promotion or
revenue generation.
What could we do then? After discussions with various sources, HMRC gave
some guidance that it was OK to carry out product development, staff training
and marketing strategy in order thatwhen we came back we would be in a
stronger position to move forward again.
We took full advantage of that and added new features into the software, many
of which had been put on the back burner due to the daily pressures of
supporting existing systems. Some staff went and upskilled themselves in a
variety of areas and others of us started to look forward as to what opportunities
there might be once the lockdown was eased.
One thing that was happening was the late spring weather was really good and
fruit was ripening in the fields. However, the Eastern European people who
usually pick all this fruit were not allowed back into the country so what was
going to happen to it now? Boris Johnson appealed to the country and came up
with the slogan “Pick the fruit, save the farmers and feed the nation”.
This in itself gave us the germ of an idea in that yes, people could go and pick
the fruit but there were restrictions on numbers, social distancing was required
and the farm staff had to be kept safe. How then could all that be controlled?
Our solution was an on-line bookings system where a picking voucher was
bought for the type of fruit to be picked. Initially this was strawberries but as the
season progressed there were gooseberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc.
The system we created was very simple, you pay for the voucher on-line, obtain
a date/time when you could go and pick the fruit and then turn up at the
appointed time. You present your voucher, which is exchanged for the
appropriate punnet size for the fruit you are picking and off you go into the
fields. Social distancing in the fields was controlled by markers and a one-way
system. Once the punnet was full, put it in your car and go home.
We were the only company offering such a system so a significant number of
the country’s Pick Your Own Farms took it on board as their method of
operation. Needless to say our revenue streams just grew and grew as more
farms adopted the system and more fruit became available. Some farms even
added vegetables to their offering.
As the season progressed the lockdown was eased and visitor attractions were
once again allowed to open, admittedly with limited numbers. The issue here
was that they also had to maintain social distancing, which meant that visits had
to be pre-booked. What better way than with an on-line bookings system?
Enter Merlin ® again, as we had the system all ready to go with a website where
customers could just sign in and create their own branded bookings and
ticketing platform in under an hour. Once again they signed up in significant
numbers and our revenue streams continued to grow.
June was the significant turning point as we could see that on-line sales were
booming for all our clients, which obviously meant that so were ours and the
outcome was a better June than in any previous year.
Moving into July with even more venues coming on board, covering everything
from Hog Roasts to Maize Maze all needing on-line booking systems, our
revenue streams hit an all-time high, with sales up by 500% on the same period
last year.
This is continuing throughout August and we know we will be breaking even
more records, with the need for booking being increased as cafes, restaurants,
etc also have to control numbers and therefore need a bookings system. We’re
now well into seven figures each month and still growing at a fast rate.
How did we get to where we are now, was it by chance, pure luck or more than
that? I put it down to some business advice I was given many years ago when I
was told that you don’t sell products, you find problems and sell solutions. He
summed it up like this “problem seeking, problem solving, friend for life. Yes,
we were in a sticky situation back in March but so were many others, so could
we do anything to help them that would also help us? The answer, as you can
see, was a resounding “yes” so we went off and did it.
The net result of all this is that our company is much stronger now than before
the lockdown and we are now recruiting three additional staff to cope with the
phenomenal growth.