Case study
Customer Success Story: Thor Building Products
Thor storms through growth barriers with Marmalade.
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Thor storms through growth barriers with Marmalade
Steele Ryan, managing director of Thor Building Products, is no stranger to the financial hurdles that comes with managing a growing business. Since it started over two decades ago, the Queensland-based company, which manufactures insulation products for home, new builds and renovations across Australia, has weathered the storms of the Global Financial Crisis and the infamous failed home insulation program.
But it was the most recent hurdle – the coronavirus pandemic – that Steele thought would be the end of them.
“When the coronavirus pandemic happened, we thought that would be a hurdle too big for us to jump,” he said.
Steele had been considering how to grow the business for a while and, more importantly, work out a way to thrive in the current environment. That’s when he heard about Marmalade.
Thor’s general manager Bernard Ode explains how Marmalade helps unlock dollars for growth by enabling them to cash-in eligible unpaid invoices any time.
“As a manufacturing business we’ve got raw materials on the water and in transit. We’ve got raw materials in the factory waiting for conversion, and we’ve got finished products in the store waiting to be sold,” said Bernard.
“And that’s all our dollars tied up.”
With Marmalade we’re able to bring forward the payment for those products, which means effectively we’ve got the cash to buy more products and allow our business to grow.
Bernard Ode
For Steele, this was an instant game changer.
“By using Marmalade we’ve been able to turn our business into a cash register business. We can raise an invoice today and the money can be in our bank that same afternoon,” Steele said.
“Now the tough times aren’t so tough anymore. In fact, if [Marmalade] was around 21 years ago at the start of the business, I don’t know what size Thor building products would be now.”
Steele said he believes that Marmalade has helped the company grow 17% in the last year alone.
“And year to date we’re doing much better,” he said.
The cost saving benefits are significant for Thor Building Products, especially considering the debtor insurance products that are no longer required.
“That was $60,000 a year for Thor. Our bank finance product added up to $170,000 a year plus,” said Steele.
What’s more, savings in human resources are estimated to be more than 50 hours, in part because employees no longer need to waste time chasing late invoice payments from customers.
For Steele, the benefits of Marmalade go even deeper. It has let the business shift away from bank loans that tied up his personal property assets as security.
“One of the most personal advantages that I’ve had with Marmalade is that my assets, my family’s and my wife’s assets, were up as a security for any debt that I had to fund this business,” he said.
“When you’re funding hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars per month, there was a substantial amount of security needed.
“It’s not needed any more.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Steele 100 per cent recommends Marmalade to any business that needs to free up their cash flow.
They’ve changed the way we do business. We can grow this business to whatever we want to now, and we could only do it because of Marmalade – it’s that simple.
Steel Ryan