How The School of Sign Language used Kriya loan to support deaf pupils
Debra Cartlidge began losing her hearing when she was five years old. To begin with she not only struggled to hear what was going on at school, but also found it hard to admit that she couldn’t hear. “Having all that negativity going on in my life growing up”, Debra tells us, “being told I was fit for nothing and never going to achieve anything, I just feel that I’m in a position now to pass on my experiences but put it in a positive way”.
And that’s exactly what she’s done. Debra set up the The School of Sign Language sixteen years ago and that has expanded and recently grown into the Deaf Hub as well. A Kriya RLS loan is helping her complete the build of the latest stage of the business: a residential school. Everything Debra does is to support the deaf community and offer opportunities where they don’t seem possible.
A chance meeting
A pivotal moment in Debra’s life (and the seed that went on to grow her business) was when a woman suggested she learn sign language. Something resonated and she went to the local charity to see what her options were. By chance there was a sign language class happening that night and soon she was hooked. The opportunity to be introduced to the deaf community gave her the confidence she needed to lose the negative labels she’d been carrying for years.
Debra coordinated British Sign Language (BSL) lessons around Lancashire, but sadly funding dried up for this. She took on another job as a Communications Support Worker and became even more immersed in the deaf community. This was when she felt like it was time for her to make a difference. Deaf schools had been shut down and mainstream education was becoming the only option. She decided to set up courses for hearing children at schools, which nobody had done before, and it all snowballed from there.
Demand was so huge, with requests for her team to run sessions across the country, so she came up with a brilliant idea. She replicated herself by creating an online character that teaches basic sign language. The reason, Debra explains, “is to plant a seed into children’s heads”. She’s a firm believer that it just takes one bit of encouragement or a new opportunity to help people achieve things they never thought possible.
Making a real difference
“For us it’s always about thinking outside the box and thinking about how we can contribute to the deaf community”. And soon it became clear to Debra that what she was doing was more than just teaching: it was a business.
While working full time, studying and being a full-time mum, Debra pursued her dream for the busines. She went to a local business support hub and they out her on a six-week course to learn how to set up and run a business. She got £1,800 to pay for her website and other basics. “It was really, really hard, but nothing’s easy, I didn’t expect it to be. But I had this passion and drive to make a difference and I knew I could make that difference”, Debra explains.
Debra wants to give people higher aspirations, despite being deaf. “I can give them opportunities, and that is the biggest word in this business”, she told us. She wants to turn the negativity that coloured her experience growing up into a positive. Changing the lives of the deaf community is a privilege that has come from the opportunities she feels lucky enough to have had.
Debra’s tireless and inspirational work has been recognised via numerous awards, including Linguist of the Year in 2006, where she came sixth (Noam Chomsky won)! She was blown away and it was a massive boost to her confidence that she could achieve more with her business. “Being nominated and being recognised for the work that you’ve done feeds that passion even more”, she says. She’s also won Inspirational Woman of the Year and Disabled Entrepreneur Award.
Always striving for more
The business has been running for sixteen years now and her passion has never faltered. Despite ups and downs that are familiar to all business owners, The School of Sign Language has grown over the years and last year they were able to expand further. They created a Deaf Hub and set up as an independent school to offer residential care to deaf people.
They do their outreach at the Deaf Hub where they have a transition programme for 18 years onwards. They offer arts and crafts, education, socialising and drop-in sessions to help with things like benefits. Now they’re going one step further by renovating a building to become a post-16 specialist institution, with a residential option for over-18s. They’re using it to bridge the gap between deaf and hearing students in education to offer different pathways to adulthood. Set over two acres in nature with breath-taking landscapes, it’s hard not to feel inspired by the work going on here.
When Debra realised she’d need more cash to complete the works, she turned to her broker, who introduced her to Kriya for an RLS loan. “Without the recovery loan we would’ve had a half-finished residential home sat in the middle of the deaf village”, she explains. The fast process was a huge bonus for Debra, who, like all business owners, doesn’t have much time. According to her, “it was such an easy process. I am so busy and I’ve just got to get things done really quickly. It was just seamless”.
“We’re always going to be striving for more, asking What can we do next? How are we going to serve the deaf community?”, she explains. We’re so pleased to be able to help Debra and her team complete the residential renovation and can’t wait to see what’s next for the business. With spectacular ruins on their land, creating an even bigger residential space is the next dream. Watch this space.
“We expect our B2B revenues to double as a result of providing Kriya’s flexible payment terms to our trade and business buyers.”
Stuart Zissman, Head of Financial Services
Halfords is the UK’s leading provider of motoring and cycling services and products. Its customers shop across over 1,750 fixed and mobile locations including, Halfords stores and garages, as well as its website, halfords.com.
Today, around a quarter of Halfords turnover is business-to-business. They sell to organisations of all sizes including SME businesses, garages, and workshops, offering discounts on automotive parts and tools with their Trade Card, as well as directly to larger commercial and government customers that buy in bulk.
However, like many well-established enterprises, Halfords found its future growth was challenged by the legacy processes of its past. Find out how they’ve teamed up with Kriya to remove the friction from their B2B commerce.
Halford's challenges
“The exam question” says Halfords’ Head of Financial Services, Stuart Zissman, “was how do we make selling to business and trade buyers less labour-intensive?” Having already overseen a successful consumer finance proposition at Halfords, it was clear to Zissman that their B2B offering had potential to grow by introducing a simple and effective credit solution.
1. B2B buyers expect payments terms
“All successful B2B propositions have some sort of financial support” Zissman explains. Whether large or small, Halfords’ business buyers want to be invoiced on payment terms. This is especially beneficial for garages and workshops, which thrive on efficient working capital cycles, allowing them to source parts upfront and defer payment until they have received compensation for their services.
Halfords recognised the opportunity to enhance their offerings by providing scalable trade credit, which was previously untapped. As Zissman says, "offering payments completes the circle."
2. Manual, unscalable processes were holding back growth
Halfords' hands-on approach to B2B processes presented an opportunity for greater scalability and growth. Wholesale orders, managed via account managers, involved manual quotes and purchase orders, which added complexity.
“We’d like to say yes to every single customer that wants to order from us,” says Head of Trade Card, Chris Millan. However, processing these detailed orders for existing buyers took time, limiting the retailer's ability to proactively attract new business and expand their account base.
What Halfords sought was a way to make their B2B offering more accessible and achieve a better economy of scale.
“We work with sole traders, business customers and government entities. Kriya is the only supplier that could support all three.”
Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
The search for a solution
Recognising the need for change, Halfords set out to find a way to modernise its B2B offering. With Kriya's 12-year track record and willingness to collaborate on a solution for their unique requirements struck a chord with Halfords.
A solution for all B2B buyers
Halfords has a diverse buyer base and needed B2B payment terms that could be offered to limited companies, government entities and sole traders.
Multichannel
With trade customers already purchasing online and in-store, Halfords needed a solution to offer payment terms holistically across their sales channels.
Risk expertise
With their focus on Motoring and Cycling, Halfords sought a partner with strong expertise in finance and payments, including robust credit and fraud detection capabilities, to help onboard their buyers.
“We are experts in motoring and cycling, and to ensure exceptional service for our customers, we decided to partner with Kriya, specialists in B2B payments and lending decisions.” Stuart Zissman, Head of Financial Services
The B2B vision
Halfords partnered with Kriya to transform their B2B offering. By integrating Kriya PayLater with their Trade Card, the retailer is combining trade discounts for B2B buyers with the ability to pay on account for online and in-store orders.
Adopting an eCommerce-first model has a number of advantages. Firstly, providing online buyers with highly-demanded payment terms expands the businesses they can sell to. Secondly, much of their offline business can be shifted to a self-serve, online checkout. Not only does this provide a smoother buyer experience, it also frees up the Halfords team to focus on the customers where their expertise has the most impact.
The near-infinite scalability of the Kriya solution means Halfords can not only improve their overall B2B customer proposition and experience, but they can also see financial benefits through the partnership too.
“Offering trade credit through payments makes it much slicker. It’s something buyers are familiar with from the consumer world.”Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
Wholesale change
Halfords have kicked off their payments transformation with their wholesale offering.
Business buyers come to the Halfords wholesale team to place bulk orders and request custom details, such as branded bikes and accessories. Before Kriya, this fully offline sales channel required multiple teams and processes to transact each order. This process led to delays and hampered conversion, such as inventory becoming unavailable during the order, or customers purchasing elsewhere.
By streamlining the entire wholesale workflow into Kriya Merchant Portal, Halfords now have a single, automated flow for processing orders.
Wholesale buyers are first onboarded into Merchant Portal. This screens for credit and fraud risk, directly providing their sales team an instant spending limit decision for the buyer. Orders can then be placed on payment terms and invoices are automatically generated for the buyer. Additionally, Kriya assists with credit control by managing payment collections too.
“We needed a way forward that was less hands-on because the whole process was very, very manual.” Chris Millan, Head of Trade Card
How it works
The buyer places a wholesale order with Halfords
Halfords onboard the buyer into Kriya’s Merchant Portal
Payment terms selected and purchase complete. The buyer pays at the end of the following month.
Partnering for growth
Reflecting on the journey so far with Kriya, Zissman says “It’s that personal touch and relationship that makes the difference to the product we’re building together.” For Zissman, it's not simply outsourcing the expertise to a third party. “It’s more like we’re onboarding Kriya into Halfords and by extension they’ve become part of our team”.
There’s a busy roadmap ahead for Halfords and Kriya, with plans to bring the whole multichannel offering to market by the autumn of 2024.
We're very excited about this development,” says Millan. “Introducing payment terms to our Trade offering eliminates barriers that previously slowed us down and unlocks opportunities with a vast number of businesses we haven't historically engaged with.”
