After her daughter was born, Stephanie Acosta realized she wanted to be present for every ballet practice and school event, but her full-time job made it challenging. Despite seeing social media ads about Amazon selling success, she felt too busy to try it. However, once her second child began preschool and she had free time during the day, Stephanie decided to explore ecommerce seriously.
Stephanie Acosta started selling on Amazon with no background in ecommerce business and struggled initially with private label products. After taking a course with the Amazon Lit community in fall 2023, she shifted her focus to wholesale and conducted thorough research to select the right products. Stephanie quickly found her niche in consumer goods and electronics, particularly in high-demand items like phone chargers, and her sales soared to nearly $30K in her first month as a wholesaler. However, despite her success, she still faced challenges due to the lack of financial infrastructure and resources to support her growing business.
In December of 2023, less than three months after joining the Amazon Lit community, Stephanie found herself with a new problem. While her business was immensely successful, she was struggling to keep enough inventory onhand to meet the holiday demand. Products were flying off the shelves, driving sales for her biggest month to date, but she found herself limited by her own cash flow.
Delays in payouts from Amazon meant that Stephanie was constantly facing cash flow hiccups that only exacerbated already frequent low inventory levels and product stockouts. As a result she was not only losing out to competitors for sales when out of stock, it also became more challenging to win the elusive Buy Box. “In order to really scale my business, I needed to create consistency,” she shared, “I needed to restock greater amounts more frequently and more strategically to see real results in sales performance. There couldn’t be any more stockouts in the future.”
Like many Amazon wholesalers, Stephanie was facing the double edged sword of her cash conversion cycle. While she clearly wasn’t letting inventory sit on the shelves for too long, she needed a way to free up more cash quickly to improve flexibility and financial agility. To streamline her cash conversion cycle, Stephanie needed to see more working capital, more often. This would let her finally start unlocking new opportunities for growth.
Now that a solid foundation had been established for her business, Stephanie was ready to explore those opportunities and actually start to scale her Amazon wholesale business. Above all else though, Stephanie prioritized sustainable growth: she didn’t want temporary or inflated metrics, she wanted long term results that could continue improving. This created the perfect opportunity to take full advantage of her business’ new found momentum and capitalize on seasonal demand, but she needed funding, quickly.
Although Stephanie needed working capital urgently, she wasn’t willing to take it from just anyone. It was important to her that she could develop a real relationship with, and whose partnership would truly support her business beyond just funding. That’s why she reached out to the Amazon Lit community for advice.
“Everything was selling out so rapidly and I knew I needed more working capital if I wanted to finish the quarter strong, so I asked what everyone else was using. They all pointed me toward Viably.”
Almost immediately Stephanie completed Viably’s funding application, but the process was so short and simple that she worried, “Is this too good to be true? It was so simple and there were already offers waiting for me in minutes.” That’s why she connected with one of Viably’s Customer Success Specialists to talk through the process and understand all the options available to her. Unlike other companies that were heavily automated, Stephanie was able to quickly set up a meeting with a real person and begin discussing her business.
“It was amazing to connect with someone so immediately. Viably made their team incredibly accessible and easy to use for support,” Stephanie shared, “As soon as I could talk to someone I began to see that everything really was that simple. All I had to do was accept my offer and the money was almost instantly in my account.”
Thanks to Viably’s support, Stephanie has been able to continue growing her Amazon wholesale business month over month ever since. In March of 2024, Stephanie went on to take a second round of funding with Viably in order to scale her business even further. “It felt like an obvious decision to continue working with Viably, especially after building such a strong relationship with the team. I was on vacation with my family, when a member from the team called about the second offer, and it was even easier to accept than the first. It was so fast.” It was with this second round of funding that Stephanie was able to reach her highest month of sales to date, at over $80K.
Beyond working capital to grow, Viably has provided Stephanie with a number of tools, all designed to help her business continue to scale sustainably. Among them, Viably Growth has been instrumental in helping Stephanie truly understand the breakdown of her expenses and see the full financial picture.
“The automatic expense categorization is so useful,” she shared, “It’s helped improve my financial literacy so much, which is really important to me because this isn’t something I ever had a background in. I didn’t know anything about ecommerce business when I started.”
By partnering with Viably, Stephanie found much more than just the right working capital for her business, although that was of the utmost importance. She also found a team of ecommerce experts, willing to provide resources, long-term relationships, and truly understand her business. Altogether, it made for a comprehensive and personalized experience that brought Stephanie peace of mind when it came to every intimidating financial decision.
Viably’s simple and quick funding application allowed her business to streamline cash conversion cycles, taking her business that much further.
With newfound resources and opportunities, Stephanie has begun to think about her Amazon business in the long run. Right now, success is simple, “Any month that’s profitable, that I can pay my bills and have money to invest back into the business or pay myself with is one where I’m happy.”
Although she doesn’t have any hard metrics that she’s chasing after, Stephanie is prioritizing longevity of her business, and what that growth can offer her children in the future. “My mom is a first generation immigrant from the Dominican Republic,” she shared, “I was the only one of my siblings born in the United States and the second person to graduate from college. All of these opportunities are new to me. I want to make the most of them for my family.” Each increase in sales and revenue month over month marks success to Stephanie, proof that she’s developing financial literacy skills that she can pass onto her kids one day.
“I’m not trying to rush things, but gradually I’m working toward that goal of a financial legacy for my kids. I don’t want them to ever have to struggle in life, so even if it’s $5K more this week, or $10K more next month, it’s more that I can give them.”
Right now, that means Stephanie is looking to invest more time and resources into winning the Buy Box for her business, consistently. After that she intends to expand back into private label categories, this time with more research and experience. One day, she thinks that might mean considering an exit from the business, but for now she’s just happy to continue scaling.
To other businesses looking for opportunities to grow, she advises, “Apply for Viably, or at least look into what they can offer your business. Their team truly understands Amazon sellers and the process to apply is so simple, there is nothing to lose. And, once you get your offer you can have money almost immediately in your bank account to start growing.”
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