Make a Melody
Make a Melody participated in InterTradeIreland programmes to build their tendering and export capabilities, helping them secure major contracts and drive significant business growth.
Make a Melody is a Therapy and Counselling Organisation in Northern Ireland – one of the largest providers of the HCPC Arts Therapies (Music, Art and Dramatherapy). Operating since 2021, they offer a range of counselling and therapeutic services to schools, day centres, hospitals, hospice, and home visits, offering services to neurotypical and neurodivergent populations. One of the challenges for their business was that they were struggling to secure contracts to allow for permanent employment, so it made sense for them to explore the public sector tender market as a first step to secure consistent work and drive growth.
InterTradeIreland genuinely wants to see your business grow and succeed – and they have the resources to make it happen.
Stuart Watson, Make a Melody, Founder
How Make A Melody have worked with InterTradeIreland
Go-2-Tender 2024 – 2025
Go-2-Tender is an InterTradeIreland programme designed to give SMEs the confidence, knowledge and practical skills to tender successfully for public sector contracts across the island of Ireland.
Business owner Stuart Watson took part in a Go-2-Tender workshop in 2024 and subsequently applied for one-to-one mentoring support following news of their first tender opportunity. Their mentoring included assistance with both completion of the required response documents and pricing strategy development, as well as submission of a competitive tender bid. As a result, Make a Melody won their first contract, growing from a team of 2-3 employees to a team of 15 in the process.
A year later, they availed of the five day Go-2-Tender mentoring package, receiving support with using the bid/no bid matrix and development of bid strategy. They were delighted to secure a contract supporting 46 Post-Primary Schools in Northern Ireland through counselling and therapy, which enabled Make a Melody to expand to over 35 permanent members of staff.
First-Time Exporters 2024
The First-Time Exporters programme helps first-time or early-stage exporters develop new cross-border trade opportunities for their business.
By taking part in the programme in 2024, Make a Melody gained valuable business advice on export and sales strategy. Through fully funded training and mentoring support, they benefitted from sales driven market research, identifying priority target markets to actively pursue. They also gained a wealth of knowledge across sales, marketing and business operation processes.
As a result, Make a Melody are now scaling up, with turnover increasing every quarter, utilising the skills and objectives learned on the programme.
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Stuart WatsonWe owe much of our business growth and expansion to InterTradeIreland support, it has truly been the catalyst for our success. Their programmes have helped us create structures and systems to sustainably grow, as well as giving us the confidence to apply for tenders of our own.
