Before Tracy began selling on Amazon, she wanted to open her own business for women’s accessories with her daughter. Although neither was one to shy away from hard work, they found that creating a brand from scratch was a challenge that wouldn’t quite work for them. Determined to own a business, the pair pivoted and researched how to acquire an existing business. After reviewing their options and interviewing possible acquisition candidates, Tracy and her daughter purchased a business focused on selling men’s accessories on Amazon in 2021. While the business was successful prior to their purchase, Tracy and her daughter have continued to see it thrive on Amazon but deep-down, knew it could be taken to greater heights.
After purchasing the company, Tracy and her daughter spent a year getting their bearings in the ecommerce world. In 2022, after familiarizing herself with Amazon, its customers, and its products, Tracy began to look from the baseline of their sales to the ceiling. “We were at that point where we were ready to start scaling, but the question was, how could we do that?”
Thanks to the stability and good health of her business, Tracy began to think about expanding and scaling the business at a greater rate. The biggest obstacle they faced in scaling was keeping enough stock on hand, “It’s a good problem, to be low on stock or out of stock, but as soon as we get it back in, people are purchasing again. It can feel impossible to keep up.”
Like many Amazon and ecommerce sellers, Tracy faced the challenge of long timelines for inventory shipments. Coupled with the high demand for the products, these extended waiting periods had a large impact on her ability to grow and ultimately stunted potential sales. “We constantly wanted to grow a little bit more. But, that meant we needed to get more inventory and we would have to get that inventory more often.”
When Tracy and her daughter acquired the company, they were able to review its sales and growth history, dating back to its start in 2014. All of the previous investments and projections for the business were stored in Excel spreadsheets, and the thorough documentation made financial growth for the company easy to track. To forecast growth and sales “We were annually plugging in data, with a formula that the previous owner said worked. And obviously, it did work if the business had gotten this far, but to scale you have to do something different.” Despite a background in accounting, Tracy was tired of dealing with manual entry and formulas.
While Tracy and her daughter had found success in the business they purchased, they still saw plenty of growth opportunities. It was time for a quicker and easier solution to cash flow management and forecasting, and, they hoped with that, greater opportunity to scale up sales and growth of the business.
With their business already in a healthy place, Tracy and her daughter had the advantage of finding the perfect fit when it came to partners. Although they had spoken with other funding providers, they felt strongly that the funding options, platform, and partnership Viably offered aligned the best with their goals.
“In addition to having funding options that I liked, when I came across Viably, I also really appreciated the Growth tool. I loved how it captures all of my sales, inflows and outflows, automatically, and it’s not something that you have to manually input.”
Unlike other companies, Viably provided value to Tracy’s business in more ways than funding. With access to all-in-one tools like Viably Growth and Banking, Tracy can reallocate time and energy once spent on spreadsheets to scaling her business instead. “It updates seamlessly, placing all that information right in front of you. It shows you the inventory you have on hand and what you need to order based on that.” With more information available consistently, Tracy can now make data-driven decisions quickly and efficiently, thus maximizing profit margins for her business.
“The Viably Growth tool is a great product, and it’s a huge thing that led me to work with Viably,” Tracy shared. While there were a variety of channels for funding, there was only one company that could supply her business with tools that generated a comprehensive picture of cash flow. And even with a cash-positive, healthy business, knowing where her money was at any given moment still made all the difference to Tracy.
Although valuable tools set Viably apart, an easy application for excellent funding opportunities opened the door to a successful partnership. Tracy and her daughter wanted their business’ success to speak for itself, “We wanted something that was easy, convenient. Our sales, and the amount of income that comes in, that just says it all.” Out of six products sold by the business, “we have some very high sellers, and we wanted to purchase more of them to have in stock”
Conversations with real people, who took the time to understand their business made this a reality. Thanks to an ongoing relationship with Viably’s Customer Success specialists, Tracy and her daughter had peace of mind when it came to every intimidating financial decision along the way.
Viably’s simple and quick funding application allowed their business to get an expedited injection of cash, propelling Tracy and her daughter one step closer to achieving their dreams.
With newfound time and information, thanks to Viably, Tracy and her daughter have set their sights on a variety of new channels for expansion and growth. Together, they’re interested in dreaming even bigger for their business, in every direction that they can imagine.
Their success in the Men’s Accessories category on Amazon has encouraged the duo to seek out new opportunities to reach more customers. The time freed up from maintaining spreadsheets has been reallocated to growing their presence on Shopify, exploring Target’s ecommerce platform, and even researching growing into traditional retail stores, like Express. “We’ve looked into options like these before, but now we have the time to get back into that.”
Tracy and her daughter are also looking at strategies to extend their reach beyond PPC campaigns and organic traffic, “We want to grow our customer clientele, right now it’s all from Amazon. We want to get outside of that, and start using social media more. We have social media but we haven’t done a lot with it.” The mother-daughter team is also considering launching new products, including new styles and variations of bestsellers. Viably Growth has been key in this process to forecast accurate predictions of success and revenue.
Since working with Viably, there’s been more time and funding to support their goals. “We all want more, and for us right now that’s just scaling and moving to the next level.” Now that Tracy has seen the baseline of their business’ success with Viably, she’s confident that the only place to go from here is up.
To other businesses looking for funding, she advises, “Write down all your pros and cons. What is important for your business? What isn’t important for your business? Then when you’re reviewing different funding companies you’ll have it at your fingertips, to help decide which is the best fit. They all offer different things and provide different things so it’s important that you know what your business needs.”
Like many sellers, Tracy is primarily focused on what’s happening in her business right now but she recognizes that understanding what’s to come is critical for scaling. Viably’s funding has helped Tracy and her daughter stock up on inventory, before they’re out of stock, but beyond funding Viably’s Growth tools have helped them simplify how they forecast for the future.
“Viably works for us because that’s where we are at right now, and it’s where we’re looking to go. We’re expanding, growing, and scaling–so planning for the future with Growth and Funding is important to me.”
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