We spoke with Mark Murrell, CEO of Get Maine Lobster, about how his company uses Mercury to make sure its financial system runs like a well-oiled machine.
Feature: User permissions, payment approvals, finance integrations
Company: Get Maine Lobster
CEO: Mark Murrell
What they’re building: A direct-to-consumer company that delivers lobster and seafood from the cold waters of Maine to any doorstep in the U.S.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Tell us the story behind Get Maine Lobster.
A friend of mine had an idea to ship lobsters all over the country and I told him I’d do some research for him. After looking into it, I found that there was potential but that you’d really have to focus on the customer experience.
My friend didn’t like that answer but I knew I could figure it out. A few months later, I launched the company.
For a few years, we ran with about five people. Then in 2019, I made a strategic acquisition to get into wholesale and get more control of the product. That came with a physical location and employees. By 2020, we had grown 200%. Our current team is now twenty people.
You previously banked with Chase before making the switch to Mercury. Why did you decide to move your banking over?
The banking experience at Chase was fine, but it just wasn't enough. One of the things we had an issue with at Chase was electronic transactions like ACH and wires. We have global employees, so when credit card or ACH transactions are denied outright for potential fraud instead of just getting flagged for me to review, that slows me down. I don't have time to deal with that.
At one point last year, I was complaining about our banking and our fractional CFO recommended checking out Mercury. With Mercury, I can just tell that you want me to succeed, and that's who I want to align with. We are launching two brands, getting deeper into wholesale, collaborations, licensing, and more. So banking is really important. More capital is going to be coming in. It’s important to us that we have growth products to tap into.
What were your banking needs when you joined Mercury?
I wanted to establish a relationship with a modern bank that would take the time to understand my type of business — an ecommerce business that’s been around for a while, has had spurts of growth (sometimes massive growth), and now is getting ready to grow again. I wanted to get access to cash and be able to add other accounts quickly and have multiple business accounts under one login. On Mercury, [handling multiple accounts] is easily done with a neat little dropdown.
How do you use Mercury's customizable controls to tailor what access people have to the account?
For permissions and access, we have card-only users and a bookkeeper, and that’s really it. We also use payment approvals. There’s someone who does all the check cutting, then it comes to us, and then the finance company we outsource to.
It's funny, Chase had this approvals functionality too, but setting somebody up in their system was not simple from a view-and-edit standpoint.
How do you use Mercury to integrate your company’s financial system?
With Mercury, I actually spend 75% less of my time on banking.
The biggest banking need Mercury addressed was the seamless integration with all of our other tools, like Xero for accounting and Gusto for payroll. Having everything integrated makes us faster and gives us a better understanding of how our business is doing.
We used to have to wait a couple of months to get our financials. Now with Mercury we only wait 15 days. That’s a game-changer for us.
Another cool thing is that when you log in to Mercury, it states the money in and money out right in the dashboard. It's nice to get that quick pulse check that makes it easier for us to know what to keep doing and what to stop doing. I like having all of these sources of information integrated into one system that tells us the story of our business.
Interested in being featured as a founder spotlight in an upcoming issue of The Messenger newsletter and our blog? Sign up for a Mercury account, then submit your company for consideration here.
Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust ®️; Members FDIC.