Sean Covey
Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Zach, your line is open
Yes, sure. Yes. Yes, so we started this last year and I think one of the reasons our gross contracts are down year-over-year is because some of the schools entered into this last year where we basically -- we said over three years at 80,000 to implement and install the Leader in Me. With some of these new models, we have made it less expensive. It's a same amount $80,000 that is over four to five years. And also the different model I just spoke of is also less expensive way of getting started. So between the two of them last year, we had -- of our 450 schools that we brought on, we had probably 200 of them go to this new model. We feel like over the long-term, it's going to be really good for us, because we're going to be able to get more schools in. Our pipeline looks very promising right now. Last year, we brought on, as I mentioned, 447 new schools, we're looking at bringing on over 500 this year in the US and Canada and many more beyond that in other countries. And so -- and we also think it's going to be stickier down the road, because they're paying less upfront, there we explain to them this is a four year or five years implementation model. Even though they're not signing contracts for that, they're basically agreeing to it. We find that it's -- once they've kind of set the stage for we're going to do this for four years or five years, they typically stay, the retention rate is helpful. So we feel like it's promising. This is our second year of doing this. And we think the future -- the key to this is going to be getting more schools, it's all about net new schools, and keeping them -- and keeping that retention rate as high as possible. So that's that we're making. So we'll continue to have options. So we still have the traditional recommended model that we've been doing for many years. And last year, we just said we introduced some new models with lower upfront costs, this year we will probably introduce another option as well, that's lower upfront. Again, with the end in mind of getting several thousand hopefully 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 up to 10,000 schools that are paying their annual membership fee, the subscription fee that we have, and then trying to create some more add-ons from there.