Educated Beards

Working with the Impact loan and Ignite Fredericton has been a really great experience for us. It’s really helped our business be able to grow, to expand internationally, to cut down on production time.

Two years ago Educated Beards was just an idea. One year ago we completed a business accelerator program and really started building and working on our business. Fast forward to today we have five employees. We’ve expanded and have about one hundred and fifteen stores across the country carrying our products, we’re now starting to expand down into the United States and into Europe. I couldn’t imagine the amount of growth that we’ve had over the last year. And we contribute that to the support that we have received here in Fredericton, and the Impact loan and Ignite Fredericton were a big part of that.

The application process for the Impact loan was pretty good. It was a pretty short process and everybody involved were just really friendly and you can tell that they have the entrepreneurial spirit themselves, that they want to support us as startups.

One of the things that we used the Impact loan for was to purchase a machine that would allow us to make our products way faster, allowing us to increase the amount of output of products we can make in a day. We also used the Impact loan to purchase a couple of our key ingredients in bulk, as the more you purchase, the volume, the less expensive it is. The Impact loan also helped us build our new website which enables us to be able to take over the market in the United States and internationally.

I have recommended Ignite Fredericton and the Impact loan to several of my entrepreneur friends. In Fredericton there is a great community for startups and entrepreneurs and we tell anyone that hasn’t already got a hold of Ignite Fredericton or the Impact loan to at least explore the option because it has made a difference for us and it could for them as well.