How Parade Turned Trust Into Their Secret Weapon

Spoiler: It Involved a Lot Less Spreadsheet Hell

Meet Parade

The Dream: Connect fashion lovers with the world's coolest boutiques and independent brands

The Reality: Craig Smith and his team were drowning in manual processes while trying to build the next big thing

The "This Can't Go On" Moment

Picture this: You're building an awesome marketplace connecting fashion brands with customers, but behind the scenes? Pure chaos.

Parade was stuck with:

• Finance systems that barely existed (unless you count year-end accounts and prayer)
• Seller payments via manual spreadsheet torture - downloading remittances and manually figuring out who gets paid what
• Zero visibility into what actually mattered - no dashboards, no real metrics, definitely no clue about unit economics
• US expansion dreams on hold because the finance setup couldn't handle it

Craig knew something had to give:

"We had no data room or dashboards, and the metrics we did have were not tied to company growth and profitability. Very early in the company, we understood that it needed to change."

Translation: "Help. Please. Now."

Why Not Just Hire Someone Full-Time?

Smart question. Craig could have hired a full-time finance person or gone with a traditional accounting firm. Instead, he chose the fractional route - dial up the expertise as you grow, without the full-time salary commitment.

Plus, we came recommended by Albert (always nice when someone vouches for you!).

The First 90 Days: From Chaos to "Wait, This Actually Works?"

We rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Here's what we built together:

The Boring (But Essential) Stuff

• Proper management accounts - finally, numbers that made sense
• Payroll that didn't require a PhD to figure out
• Dashboards that updated twice daily (because who has time to manually refresh spreadsheets?)
• Budgeting and metrics ready for their next fundraise

The Results: Sleep-at-Night Level Good

The Big Win

Here's what Craig told us made all the difference:

"The most impactful change, and one that allowed me to sleep at night, was our consistency and accuracy of seller payments and the process in which we paid our growing community of sellers."

What This Actually Meant for Business

• Trust became their superpower: Sellers never had to worry about getting paid (imagine that!)
• Growth on autopilot: Reliable payments meant sellers started referring their friends
• Founder sanity preserved: Craig could focus on building the business instead of firefighting payment issues
• Scalable foundation: The system worked perfectly as they grew

The real kicker? As Craig put it: "The work that Boring Bits put in place demonstrated with real impact that trust can be a product and a moat."

Trust as a moat. We're definitely stealing that line.

Drowning in spreadsheets and manual processes?

Let's chat about turning your finance chaos into a competitive advantage. Because life's too short for payment processing panic attacks.

Let's Chat