Added 34 investors during the capital raise from early in the year
We opened our second location on Atlantic Blvd. here in Jacksonville at the beginning of the year.
Our Zorro Financial subsidiary has been operating in a Tienda Latina that was owned by one of our directors and in July we absorbed the operations of the store. The goal was to convert a portion of the store space into a full service office which we have done. Now we can be right in the middle, so to speak, of the store traffic which is comprised of our exact target market.
We see this as a critical step in our expansion plan. The goal will be to identify successful, immigrant-based shops that would allow us to carve out a small office inside of the establishment to offer our tax, insurance and business services to their customers. The belief is that the store-owners will welcome the rental income (which would be less than we would pay for a separate unit in the same plaza.)As well as generate additional traffic to their store.
Once we have a clear indication that the concept is accepted, we will use that as the model to show other shop-owners (including Indian,Haitian and other specialty shops).
In time for a 2026 launch, I have developed a comprehensive sales, client services, cash management, and reporting platform called OfficeFlow. This platform will allow the “front-of-the-house” employees the luxury of using most of their energy on building rapport with clients versus energy on production.
Clients that come in for help with the creation of letters for various reasons, or creating invoices for their finished jobs, for example, can have those documents created by the cashier with just a few clicks, after which receipts are automatically generated and the sale is registered.
Training for working out front has been reduced to a couple of days instead of a couple of weeks.
2025 Challenges/Responses
The current administrations follow through on the promise of a crack-down on undocumented workers, as many of you know, has had an effect on business. Very recently we have seen the ICE activity cool off, which I expected, but It lasted far longer than I expected.
We lost several clients, some of which ran companies and were responsible for multiple revenue streams for us.
Fortunately, it seems that the folks that remain understand that life must go on and we have began seeing an uptick in those that are opening businesses and obtaining all of the necessary insurances, etc.
We have also heard from several clients that had been detained and released that one of the reasons that they were released was that they were up to date on their taxes. This works to our advantage.
2026 Plans
We are cautiously optimistic about the upcoming tax season. Changes made by the President’s Big Beautiful Bill will adversely affect many of our clients with ITIN’s. We are advertising to other immigrant populations in an effort to expand our client base further. We will also focus more on the Puerto Rican client to be able to offset any lost Central-American clients.
Word travels fast among our target market clients and our belief is that any reduction in business stemming from the realization that the child-tax credits have been reduced for certain taxpayers will be offset by those that have heard that if up to date on their taxes and detained, they can be released.
We just added GEICO to our list of auto-insurance companies. We now have two well-recognized brands for our standard-market clients and five non-standard companies to offer.
After the upcoming tax season, I plan to examine the possibility of modifying the core coding of OfficeFlow to be able to package it for sale via subscription to other multi-service offices around the country.
Finally, we want to get an office open on the Orange Park side of town, as well as one toward Middleburg during the summer of 2026.
Thanks to you shareholders for your confidence. On behalf of Grupo Zorro, I wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous 2026.
