looking for advice only from the experienced sellers (Selling in the US Marketplace).
We are facing a serious cash challenge, most of our suppliers only take wire transfers, and Melio has been rejecting our transactions (not sure if it’s because of the category).
Recently met a funding party, but the deal wasn’t great (9% origination fee on top of interest, and funds release time was 10+ weeks).
Partner is based in Missouri, and we also spoke with a local bank, but they are asking for tons of documents and offering a small amount.
Interest rates are around 7 to 11%, which isn’t bad, but the process is pretty slow, and the amount isn’t big enough to justify the effort.
So I wanted to ask those who have scaled beyond $1M in a Year:
How are you managing cash flow and funding growth?
Appreciate any insights from sellers who’ve gone through this stage.
Please tag anyone you can think of who could be of help here.
Once you start scaling past mid-six figures, the biggest shift is moving away from consumer-style solutions like Melio or random “e-commerce lenders” and instead building a proper financing stack made specifically for inventory businesses, because wire-only suppliers and 30–60 day cash cycles will choke you long before sales do. Most seven-figure Amazon sellers I know run a combination of three pillars: first, a reliable working-capital line from a local bank or credit union, but they only get approved once they show clean books, 12+ months of revenue, and proper entity structure, so it’s slow at first but becomes your cheapest money long term. Second, inventory-based funding from companies like 8fig, Onramp, SellersFi or Payability, which release funds much faster than banks and aren’t scared of wire-heavy categories, and while they look pricey on paper, they’re often cheaper than losing stockouts or missing Q4. Third, supplier negotiations — not discounts, but terms: once you’ve proven consistency, many seven-figure sellers push for 20% deposit and 80% on completion, or even 30/70, which effectively becomes zero-interest financing from the supplier and is the single biggest unlock for growth.
The truth is that the sellers who scale quickly rarely rely on a single source of capital; instead, they stagger their funding so no one bottleneck can slow them down, and they avoid lenders with huge origination fees unless the margin on a particular SKU clearly justifies it. If Melio is blocking your category, that’s normal for beauty, electronics, supplements, and a bunch of “high-risk suppliers,” and most experienced sellers just move to direct wires from a business checking account or use Wise/HSBC/Chase for international payments since they don’t interfere with product category. If I were in your position today, I’d clean up financial statements, get a small bank line approved even if it’s tiny, use an e-commerce inventory lender with fast payouts to bridge your next 3–6 months, and simultaneously work to negotiate supplier terms, because that’s ultimately what scales you from cash-strained to stable.