Building a Business To Fuel Development in the Midwest
Born and raised in Michigan, John Patterson always knew he wanted to be a part of the growing movement to revitalize industries in the Midwest. “I’ve always loved new tech industries emerging globally,” Patterson said. “That’s why I decided to start researching opportunities to purchase an aerospace company.” After founding Precision Manufacturers in 2017, later that year Patterson purchased ACE Tooling Inc., a custom tooling manufacturer. ACE Tooling specializes in designing and executing molds, dies, machining fixtures, and precision gauges for the commercial and military aerospace industry.
Cash Flow Concerns Due to Long Customer Payable Cycles
As a manufacturer, ACE Tooling has seen considerable success and growth: their reported annual revenues in 2019 was $2.3MM, which was a 30% increase from the previous year. However, they struggled with cash flow concerns due to four month long customer payable cycles. “We were growing very fast,” Patterson said. “At the time, one of the problems we were trying to figure out was how to supplement the large cash outlay and build new jobs.”
How Bluevine Helped Scale Their Business
Fortunately, ACE Tooling came across Bluevine’s Invoice Factoring and found the factoring process to be smooth and straightforward. “We have been through several situations in the last two years when we were in need of quick cash, and each time we needed to move invoices through the Bluevine system, we were able to do so without any issue.” Recently, Patterson had a customer who was very behind on submitting their payables to them, which created a large cash flow issue. With Bluevine, Patterson was able to factor another invoice from another client and have it processed within twenty-four hours, effectively helping them to fill the cash flow gap. “Bluevine’s quick response time is excellent,” said Patterson. “The ease of uploading documents and getting quick payments is very nice, and more importantly, our customers have no issue working with Bluevine.”
Propelling Future Growth with Bluevine Invoice Factoring
As ACE Tooling continues to scale, Patterson foresees himself using Bluevine’s factoring process to accelerate business growth. “We’ll likely need to onboard new customers this year as we continue to factor with Bluevine,” said Patterson. “This will of course help our cash flow during growth.”
