Case studies - business support
Company: ABC School
Entrepreneurs: Sue Rao & Bozena Grzelak
Sue and Bozena founded the ABC School in March 2002 to teach english to foreign students using the Callan Method - a direct and intense method of teaching based primarily on speaking. Since opening, the school has an estimated turnover exceeding £150,000 and both owners work 10 - 11 hours per day.
Sue and Bozena decided to open the school after completing a Masters degree dissertation consisting of building a website for an imaginary small business. The imaginary business was a small language school. Sue and Bozena made good partners as they were already best friends and flatmates. Both had worked in a large language school for many years and could see that there was huge potential, but that it was not being achieved.
Sue and Bozena got started on their business after speaking with Liam Hickey from the GLE oneLondon business advice team in Lambeth who they started visiting regularly over six months. Liam helped them put together a comprehensive and thorough 50 page business plan. Once the preparation work was complete, Sue and Bozena were able to secure loans from NatWest Bank and £3,000 from GLE oneLondon’s Lambeth start up fund as well as personal funds.
Today the school is advertised through various foreign magazines and newspapers, national centres (Japanese Centre, Polish Centre), but in the beginning a lot of marketing was done through friends handing out flyers and via "word of mouth."
On the start up process, Sue says, “I remember, it was a series of knock backs, after knock backs, being told by banks that no one was interested in putting the capital up.” Since then, finding quality teachers has been the main obstacle and turnover is quite high – an obstacle the owners don’t expect will disappear.
The most difficult parts of the start up process has been raising the capital and finding the premises, They eventually found an ideal location in Neal Street, Covent Garden and everything has worked out. “It took us almost two years to find our current premises, and we had a couple of nasty experiences along the way.”
Their advice to budding entrepreneurs; “Think carefully about it,
make sure you go into business with someone whom you have mutual respect,
can trust unquestionably and rely on.”