THE AUSTRALIAN – Glenn Norris, Senior Business Reporter
When ex-swimmer Luke Trickett and his Olympian wife Libby set up their first management
business together a decade ago they had to sell their home to make ends meet.
Luke Trickett also recalls having to rely on credit cards and loans from family to keep cash
coming in the door.
Those early struggle years were the brainchild for Trickett’s latest business venture, a
fintech startup called Marmalade that speeds up payments to small operators.
Unpaid invoices is one of the top causes of cash-flow problems for Australian small businesses,
and poor cash-flow is one of the top causes of small business failure.
Marmalade, which has just passed $1m in revenue in its first year of operation, uses an
old financial tool – invoice factoring – and gives it a tech twist. Marmalade’s
payment platform operates through business software company Xero’s cloud
computing service.
Businesses can either wait for payment from customers just like PayPal, Block or Stripe, or
bring forward payments for a one-off transaction fee to Marmalade.
“We had large invoices that took quite a long time to be paid,” says Trickett. “We were
relying on credit cards and at one stage the need to sell our home.
“High interest credit was always an option, but not a good one for our business or us
personally. All we really needed was to be paid for the work we’d already done
without having to wait.
As a result, it slowed our growth and we were forced to turn down a lot of
potentially great opportunities.”
Trickett says Marmalade serves the whole gamut of businesses – from logistics and
construction to restaurants and hospitality – who want the flexibility of early
payment of their invoices.
“It can be anything from a couple of hundred dollars to an invoice in the six figures,” says Trickett. “Long gone are the days when businesses were left stranded.”
Trickett says the consumer mentality of immediacy is permeating the commercial space –
waiting for check in the mail is not an option any more.
“There are millions of small businesses in Australia and we hope to help them avoid what
Liv and I went through with out first business,” he says.
Prior to Marmalade, Trickett spent more than 15 years in the finance industry and
launching Blue Stamp Company, one of Australia’s best-kept secret or ‘low
profile’ investment funds.
Libby Trickett, who collected 24 gold medals on the international stage across Olympic, Commonwealth Games and World Championships events, went on to a sales and marketing role for a technology company and worked as a radio announcer for Triple M in Brisbane. She has now turned her focus to journalism interviewing famous sportspeople on her All That Glitters podcast.
Last year, the power couple joined the throng of city dwellers heading bush purchasing their
dream home in the rural hamlet of Bald Knob, wedged between Maleny and Landsborough in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
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