The Little Campus: commitment to excellence
While looking for childcare in Toronto for their young daughter, Carl Mercier and Tami Zuckerman found quality options lacking. They successfully addressed this by establishing The Little Campus, fittingly abbreviated “TLC.”
“We kind of joked at first, that we should open our own [center], haha, and then we did,” says Carl, “We started working on it in 2019, 2018, so it took awhile because we had to find a location, and then construction, so it took a long time.”
The Little Campus opened in March 2021 as a childhood education and daycare center where quality care, highly trained educators, and specialized programming offer optimal learning and healthy development. They consider it a private school for little kids.
“We are not exclusively focused on academics,” explains Carl, “Making them good people, making them like to learn, love to learn, discover new things, what they are passionate about, and getting them ready to go to kindergarten.”
Carl’s tech entrepreneur background is complimented by Tami’s passion for childhood education, supported by her extensive background as an elementary school teacher.
They see parallels between tech and education, “Ultimately any type of business is people-focused,” states Carl “It’s people management, it’s building culture, it’s building a strong team and making sure everyone is aligned behind the vision, but that’s also what we’re doing with our school.”
It was important to Carl and Tami that their center be the best in town. This commitment to excellence made them seek out a streamlined solution for handling payments, benefiting the parents of their students and TLC.
“The first thing you do is like, ok credit cards, how much is that going to cost?” questions Carl, “That’s a lot of money every year for a recurring payment. It seemed really expensive.”
They didn’t want to have to pass on credit card fees to parents.
They also considered pre-authorized debit options through the bank,
“I knew about pre-authorized debits because I’ve actually done it,” explains Carl, “Doing the files, uploading them to the bank, and I know it’s a pain in the neck to do.”
They wanted a payment processor that didn’t charge a percentage-based fee.
They were referred to Rotessa where they appreciated the reasonable, flat-rate pricing, and integration capabilities with Xero and Rotessa’s API, “Wow, it’s exactly what I want,” states Carl, “It was like check all the boxes for us.”
Rotessa has optimized their workflow and saved them time.
“It’s been great. We can create recurring invoices in Xero, and Rotessa picks it up automatically, bills the customer, reconciles back in Xero, so that’s all a huge amount of time saved.”
Carl and Tami’s vision has become a center that goes beyond academics to instill a love for learning. Their commitment to excellence has created a best-in-class educational facility as well as streamlined processes like payment management, ensuring a positive experience for their team, the students in their care, and parents.
