Customer Stories

How Sawyer helped the founder of Oh! Canary manage and scale her art business

Company
Oh! Canary
Industry
Art
Location
South Orange, NJ
20
classes per week
550
students & campers
4+
years on Sawyer

Introduction

Oh! Canary brings early childhood art education to families in South Orange, New Jersey. Founder Lacey Buccellato, a trained art teacher with a Masters in Art Education, saw a gap in her community when it came to pre-elementary school art education. When first starting Oh! Canary!, Lacey  shared a space with other educators and loaded up her Subaru once a week to teach a couple of small classes. There was such a great response that, even after moving to a larger shared space, Oh! Canary was bursting at the seams within 2 years.

Lacey decided to move to a studio of her own in Maplewood, NJ and began thinking about Oh! Canary as a scalable business in 2018. While she’s a pro when it comes to art, the business side didn’t come as naturally for Lacey. As her enrollment and class offerings increased she began to feel very overwhelmed with the administrative tasks. “Scheduling and keeping up with the rosters were the tipping point,” Lucy told us. “I needed that to be automated. I couldn’t keep the classes or attendance straight. I had to invest in some help.” That’s when Lacey found Sawyer and decided to sign up so she could efficiently run and scale her business.

Problem

When Oh! Canary started to grow, business owner Lacey knew that she needed a system to keep her schedules and rosters organized, automate the many administrative tasks on her plate, and let her get back to planning classes and teaching.

As we’ve increased our staff numbers, Sawyer is a really great way to keep things streamlined for all of us. It’s such a user-friendly interface, so I don’t need to spend a lot of time onboarding new teachers and explaining rosters.
Lacey Buccellato, Founder of Oh! Canary

Solution

In 2018, Oh! Canary signed on to Sawyer to get that much needed help with organization and administrative tasks. Oh! Canary continued to grow and moved into a larger space in South Orange, NJ, in March 2020. During the pandemic, Lacey and her team, with the help of Sawyer’s customer support, seamlessly switched to online programming and continued offering great art activities to young children. With the return of in-person classes and camps, it’s been nonstop growth for Oh! Canary. 

Lacey said, “As we’ve increased our staff numbers, Sawyer is a really great way to keep things streamlined for all of us. It’s such a user-friendly interface, so I don’t need to spend a lot of time onboarding new teachers and explaining rosters.” Lacey and her team value hospitality and community. As enrollment has grown, Sawyer helps them keep track of students’ names, birthdays, and more so that everyone feels welcome as soon as they walk in the door.

In the past year, Oh! Canary has also grown their business through the use of parties. With Sawyer, families in Oh! Canary’s community can easily book parties online. This seamless workflow saves a lot of time for both the parents and the team at Oh! Canary. 

Another feature that has helped Oh! Canary scale is waitlists. Not only have waitlists helped Lacey and her team fill more spots, but they also act as a growth projection and planning metric, providing insight into the interest in each class. Lacey explains that “waitlists are helpful because we can really see in real time the demand for our classes. In some weeks, our camp waitlists are up to 70 kids! It shows us the potential of what could be possible.”

With Sawyer by their side, Oh! Canary has scaled from 7 classes a week to 20 classes a week with 6-14 kids per class. During the summer, they used to run 4 weeks of camp with 12 campers per week and now they have 9 weeks of camp with nearly 30 campers per week! Plus, they have gone from 1 guaranteed party per weekend to 3 guaranteed parties per weekend. And now Lacey has 12 staff members working with her to help children discover and explore art.

See Sawyer in Action

Our software saves businesses at least 28 hours a month. Discover how smart software can transform your workflow today!
Sechdule a Demo

More Customer Stories

Try Sawyer today

See how Sawyer’s powerful registration software can help you streamline your business needs, attract more customers, and grow revenue. Book a free demo.
Hover for more info
Meet with a Sawyer expert to tour the software and discuss your business’ goals.
Photo of a business owner using Sawyer to preview their activity schedule.
“After 10 years on another registration platform, parents are telling me how grateful they are that we switched to Sawyer!”
— Jocelyn, Founder & Executive Director,
Child’s Play NY

Award-winning software for EDUCATORS

Capterra Shortlist 2024GetApp Category LeadersSoftware Advice Frontrunners 2024
US Flag
+1
Thank you!
Your submission has been received! We’re redirecting you to schedule your free demo...
Oops! Something went wrong. Please refresh and try again.