We need around $8k-$10k to keep the ball rolling. Are there any banks out there or companies willing to loan that much to as relatively new E-Commerce business? We’re doing $5k in a sales a month and showing huge promise.
@tms7981 That low of a loan is credit card territory. With a good enough credit, you should be able to get one for low or zero introductory rate. If your credit isn’t good enough for that…well…you likely wouldn’t get a business loan anyway.
@tms7981 That’s a good plan. Since it sounds like you’re just needing the cash to scale, with $5k of turnover a month, you should be able to scale from profits alone albeit on a slower speed. That’s not a bad thing to do while working on your credit.
@mombowlin That’s not all profit though, but honestly you’re right we could scale. I just set a really high goal, trying to hit $10k a month by august and it’ll be damn hard to hit that without some extra cash. Maybe I just need to take my time… gotta remember it’s a marathon not a sprint
@tms7981 Look on the supplier side for credit. Many of your suppliers will be more willing to extend credit since they know your business better than the bank, and their risk is much lower (because you are paying them back from sales of their own product, with margin included).
Many suppliers will increase your net payments and give credit based on your ordering schedule.
@tms7981 6 months into an e-commerce business And you with questionable credit is not a place where any reasonable lender would tread.
Until your business has a very substantial track record and a good balance sheet, nobody is going to want to lend you money.
The best you could do is take out a personal loan or use your credit cards but these are all going to be very expensive, so however broke you are now, you're going to be "More broke" after you take out the loan.
@tms7981 I've read a bunch of the replies and I think you need to truly evaluate your situation. Find out how much it costs to run your business and compare it to your revenue. You need to factor in your time as well, even if it's at a low working rate of $20/hr including taxes.
Once you do that, you need to figure out what your sales revenue would be to hit a break even point where the business is paying you a modest amount. Then you need to really figure out how to get there.
In addition, I'd be curious to know more about the inventory situation. Do you have people wanting to order and you're out of stock? Are you looking to just introduce more items to capture more business? Can you take pre-orders and then buy inventory with customer cash?
Big picture, right now, you don't seem like a great loan candidate. The numbers you're providing aren't painting a clear picture and you're not making it clear that if you had $10k right now, in 60 days, you'd have a profitable $30k in revenue.
