Case Study: Urban Barn
Custom House helps facilitate Urban Barn's growth - one Indian Rupee at a time.
In 1990, Urban Barn opened their first furniture store in downtown Vancouver, Canada. The store was one big room with rough, wood-planked floors and large barn-like doors opening out the back for international deliveries.
Almost 20 years later, Urban Barn employs approximately 400 employees across Canada, operates 34 retail locations from Vancouver Island to downtown Toronto and imports 50% of their merchandise from emerging markets such as China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland and the Czech Republic to name a few. It’s safe to say that Urban Barn is a national success story.
But it hasn’t always been easy.
Speed Bumps
Urban Barn’s success lies, in part, in its ability to pay their international suppliers when the money is needed, not when banks are open. In order to avoid stalled shipments and untimely orders Urban Barn had to get their money to East Coast banks before 2pm PST. When it came to making their international suppliers happy and ensuring that the business ran smoothly, they didn’t have time to worry about different time zones and fitting into a bank’s business day.
“Try to call someone in Toronto after 2pm Vancouver time and you often get an answering machine. Their business day might be over,” says Craig Stewart, the Executive Vice President for Urban Barn, “but mine isn’t. I have suppliers in China to pay.”
Currencies are being traded all over the world, day and night. “Yet making payments though a bank or clearing house meant operating on their schedule, not ours,” says Stewart. “I was beginning to get frustrated with non-competitive rates, awkward solutions and systems that just didn’t work with ours. We could have fumbled along like that for a while - a lot of businesses do - but we were convinced there had to be an easier way.”
When Stewart got a call from Custom House, the timing couldn’t have been better.
Smooth Sailing
Together with Custom House, Stewart outlined Urban Barn’s goals for paying international suppliers, defined their appetite for risk and identified solutions that the company would need to customize in order to achieve its operational objectives.
“The level of personalized service has been exceptional from the very beginning,” explains Stewart. “Custom House completely understood our business objectives and helped us to realize them”
“We adopted Custom House’s online system, which is incredibly easy to use. I can make international payments online whenever I want and I get the most competitive rates. I buy and sell currency 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, at home or at the office. Custom House’s currency charts update me minute-by-minute. I watch for trends and trade when the market looks opportune.”
Stewart began by using Custom House’s foreign currency services in tandem with other solutions but in the end, it made sense to switch to Custom House exclusively. As Urban Barn grew, their FX requirements increased and it made sense to purchase Forward Contracts, Currency Options and make international payments all at the same place.
“I never fully understood how awkward and time-consuming the alternatives had been until I started using Custom House’s services. The ability to do everything I want, when I want, with the help of an expert is a dream come true.”
-
Contact Us
If you have any questions about international payments, risk management or the specific products and services that Custom House offers please don’t hesitate to contact us.
-
Custom House in the News
Check out Custom House on CEP’s ‘Chatter’
