Exploring Innovative Cash Flow Solutions for Your E-commerce Business with Store Fund Experts

Let's talk about everything cash flow as Giulia Burrascano, Sales Account Executive at Storfund, lets us in on the daily challenges of e-commerce sellers and how Storfund's innovative solutions can revolutionize their cash flow management. 

In this episode, Giulia guides us through the labyrinth of e-commerce financing, and gets down to the nitty-gritty of their services, the approval process, and the seamless integration with various marketplaces. 

Giulia takes us down the less-trodden path of why e-commerce sellers should opt for alternative financing over traditional banks. She paints a vivid picture of how their financing solution can be seen not just as a lifeline for struggling businesses but as a strategic investment for growth.

Connect with Ben Smith:
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3F4hrt8
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/skipwithben/

Business Social Media Links
Website: https://www.sellercandy.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy

Connect  with Giulia Burrascano:
Website: https://storfund.com/
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/storfund
Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/giulia-b-255321152/

Episode link & contact info
Shareable episode link  - https://bit.ly/3Ra3dO9
For content collaborations, please email us at: grei@sellercandy.com

Never Talk to Seller Support Again.

Seller Candy is the expert operations arm of your Amazon business. We provide outcome-driven support for time-consuming and challenging Seller Central issues so you Never Have to Talk to Seller Support Again! With Agency-Level security practices and an experienced team who’s been through the thick of it, we give sellers bandwidth on demand without the hassle of hiring, training, or managing.

#amazonsellercentral #amazonsupport #ecommerce #amazonpodcast

Never Talk to Seller Support Again.

Seller Candy is the expert operations arm of your Amazon business. We provide outcome-driven support for time-consuming and challenging Seller Central issues so you Never Have to Talk to Seller Support Again! With Agency-Level security practices and an experienced team who’s been through the thick of it, we give sellers bandwidth on demand without the hassle of hiring, training, or managing.

#amazonsellercentral #amazonsupport #ecommerce #amazonbusiness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Banks and traditional financial institutions probably don't understand the needs of e-commerce sellers, and so sometimes it can be better to go with a solution that's tailor made for sellers needs really.

Speaker 2: 0:16

Hello, I am your host, ben, and welcome back to season two of the Amazon Strategies show.

Speaker 2: 0:21

This show that is all strategy, with no hacks, no silver bullets and no magic pills, just real, practical strategy for serious Amazon sellers. All right, I just finished an amazing episode with Julia from store fund. We talked about something that, for me personally, is normally a less sexy portion of running an Amazon business and that's actually dealing with the disbursements and cash flow side of the equation. But today it was exciting because we actually learned a lot about the mechanics of what goes into, kind of the daily disbursements that you can get with a solution like store fund, but further than that, actually how you can leverage a solution like store fund even if you're not necessarily in a cash crunch or a need for you know, some kind of financing factoring service and actually leverage it into growing your Amazon business.

Speaker 2: 1:01

So I think this is going to be a really exciting conversation, so make sure you watch it all the way through. Let us know what you think by leaving comments, questions down below if you're watching on YouTube, or reach out to us if you want to get in touch with anyone from our team or from store. Enjoy. So today we have the pleasure of being joined by the incredible and I'm going to try to say this correctly, but Julia Borrescano. Was that right?

Speaker 1: 1:21

Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 2: 1:22

Okay, good, she is a sales account executive at store funds and she oversees the UK and Italian markets and, fun fact, she's also Italian speaking, as you could probably tell by her last name. But today she's here to talk to us a little bit more about store fund and kind of the well, the part of Amazon that I personally don't like in e-commerce, which is cash flow and dealing with disbursements and all sorts of fun stuff. So, julia, I wanted to say first off, thanks so much for being here and welcome onto the Amazon Seraja show.

Speaker 1: 1:49

Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here. This is my first podcast with store fund actually, so very exciting time.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Nice. So have you done podcast before or not at store fund.

Speaker 1: 2:00

Yeah, with my previous company I did a little podcast. But, yeah, very excited to be here today. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 2:07

Of course they're always fun. I remember the first one that I ever went on to. I was like petrified I had to do. I was like full on Tony Robbins-ing beforehand, like jumping up and down, like saying affirmations. So anyway, thank you for being here. Yeah, sometimes you got to do what you got to do.

Speaker 1: 2:21

But then now you got to roam, so I guess you must have loved it.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I kind of I feel like this was something that was just like oh yeah, do you want to do the season two? Okay, sure I'll do it. Then I'll do it. So it's been really fun, though. What I like about this is I get to connect with so many cool people, and the great thing about podcasts is, you know you've either already discovered or come to discover is I get to be selfish. At least I get to ask questions that actually I want to ask and I'm curious about, and it's a good excuse to do so. So that's my favorite thing about the podcast. So I might ask you a few selfish questions today, but the first one, I guess, is can you kind of take us back and take us, you know, back through your journey of how you ended up in this whole e-commerce world and ad store fund?

Speaker 1: 3:03

Yeah, sure, so well, I'm actually a little bit of background about myself. I've moved to London for years ago. I am originally from Turin, italy. I don't know if you've heard of it. If you're a football fan, I know football isn't huge in the US, but we have gone to one FC Barcelona game ever. Okay, yeah, honestly, my knowledge about football is just about the same. But when I say where I'm from in Italy, everyone's like, oh, that's where you ventures is from. So that's why I brought it up.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Gotcha and I moved to London to do my masters and then ended up like absolutely falling in love with London and you may remember, during that time it was just peak COVID times. So I ended up being here for a bit and then I got my previous job at my previous company and was then approached by someone who is no longer at storefront, was my manager originally and he just introduced me to the idea of storefront and I really loved. First of all, I think e-commerce is really just a great space to be in. It's a huge industry, it's a global industry and for me, being in a client facing role as a salesperson, I thought it was just going to be a very exciting opportunity to speak to people from all over the world. A bit like you said, I just really like connecting to lots of different people, so I love the idea that I would be able to speak to pretty much anyone who speaks English or Italian. So I do work with the UK, mainly because this is where I'm based, but I actually work with all European English-speaking countries. Everyone in our team speaks multiple languages, so we have French speakers, spanish speakers, so anyone outside of those languages and German. Anyone outside of those languages I will be speaking to as an English speaker and, of course, italian. So that really just excited me, the possibility of connecting with lots of different people, different cultures.

Speaker 1: 4:49

And another thing is, when I was originally approached and kind of presented this opportunity, immediately from the first conversation I could hear why people would buy into this. It just made sense to me, and I didn't really know anything about e-commerce at the time, other than it was an interesting industry I would like to get into. So for me to understand, so simply, like, oh yeah, like there is an obvious cash flow issue. This solves a very real problem and you know, as a salesperson, that's pretty much what you care about, right? Like is this product going to be something people need? And yeah, so here I am, yeah nice.

Speaker 2: 5:23

I feel like that's very true, like I've done. You know, my first job out after college was I did door to door sales and I sold alarm systems and it was a very challenging job. But, yeah, it's a lot easier to sell products when it's like, oh, there's a very, very, very clear pain point, right, and that's like that's kind of the basis of our company. Seller Candy is like everyone knows, dealing with seller support is a pain, right, and so that's what our kind of like pitches, like that you never have to talk to seller support again.

Speaker 2: 5:49

But on your guys side, you know, years back I managed a brand with a small team for my boss at the time and it was doing, like you know, I want to say, half million dollars a month. So it was a sizable account and that was a huge problem for us. The cash flow side of the equation we were getting, you know, our disbursements every I think it was two weeks and I think at that time you could request disbursements maybe every as frequently as every one week. But the products that we were selling were they were like expensive IT products, and so cash flow is such a pain point for us. To be honest, at that time I didn't know about any solutions. I know there's, you know you guys, there's a couple other people out there and everyone's got kind of their different angle. But can you give us kind of like, I guess, the high level about what store fund does and kind of how you guys are maybe different than some of the other people in the space?

Speaker 1: 6:37

Of course, yeah. So to keep it really really simple, you sell today, you get paid today, so we are a daily payment solution. We work with lots of different marketplaces, but mainly Amazon back market, all miracle marketplaces. We've also just excitingly it's a very exciting news we've just recently opened the vendor Amazon vendor central side of things, because we used to only work with Amazon sellers. This is maybe three weeks old news, so I didn't know.

Speaker 1: 7:05

That's amazing very exciting times. So what we do is we basically, yeah, solve the very real cash flow issue. We pay sellers for what they've sold on that same day. What we finance is actually shipped goods, and so that's, in a nutshell, that's what we do. You get paid regularly and you don't have to wait, as you said, for those two weeks, and you did mention that you know being, I think you mentioned the IT company. Our solution works really really well with electronic sellers and we have loads and loads of those. Just because it's an industry where people normally have to pay up front, the stuff that they need to buy is expensive and really having those two weeks wait can really really impact sellers. You know potential for growth yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 7:49

And I was gonna ask too, like I know that you work with all different types of sellers, but is there like kind of a couple different standout categories or types of products that you know those are the sellers that are really interested or really need your guys service more than others? I would assume it's really anyone that's gonna have a more expensive product or a very high, fast volume you know fast selling product. But I'm just curious from your standpoint, like do you see a lot of kind of trends or similarities, I guess, between who comes to you?

Speaker 1: 8:13

that's an interesting question.

Speaker 1: 8:15

I would say definitely, electronics are up there that means said, we do work with like all sorts of different sellers. You know we work with resellers, private label sellers ideally people who are growing quite fast, or people who, yeah, buy quite expensive stock that they need to pay for up front. I guess that presents a real need for our service. But we really work with like all sorts of sellers and in fact, one of our team I think this is a funny story to share. His name is Lucas, so shout out to you if you're watching. He's part of the sales team. He's the german speaker and he originally started out with store fund because he was a client, so he was using our service. He is also an house and seller and he's selling toilet seats. Private label seller so very niche, very specific.

Speaker 1: 9:01

He started using store fund. He thought, wow, this is, this product is great. And then we were at the time hiring for a german speaker in sales, which apparently is a super hard role to fill and then he came in and now he's with us full time so that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 9:17

Yeah, you don't hear that every day. That's pretty cool. So can you kind of walk me through, because I, to be honest, I've personally never gone through any kind of. You know, I don't want to use necessarily the word financing because I don't know if that's how you guys describe yourself or not, but I've never even gone through any of you know the traditional financing models or kind of these daily disbursement kind of solutions. So can you kind of walk me through? Hey, I might need something like this how does the service actually work and how does someone actually go about kind of getting started with this?

Speaker 1: 9:46

amazing? Yeah, of course. So, uh, yes, we do have an api in the case of amazon, which means that you know we can read your data in real time. So that means there's no manual process in fact required from this other side. They can just switch on our solution, get paid daily and there's no hassle for them.

Speaker 1: 10:03

So, in terms of how that works technically is, um, as I was saying, we will ask sellers to register on our website and give us access to their volumes on their seller central and, through the api, we're able to read their net sales. So when I say net, I mean net of any amazon's commissions and any refunds, and this is what we look at, because this is what we finance, this is what we charge the fee on. So we only ever care about net sales, if you will, and yeah, so from that moment, what we do is, if the seller decides that they want to go ahead with the offer, there's, of course, there's an approval process. So the first step is to have a call with myself, and this is where I normally ask potential customers lots of questions to try and understand their business model, if our service is really a good solution, a good fit for them, and eventually I present this report, that I write to my credit office to try and get approval and make them an offer.

Speaker 1: 10:59

Let's say that all goes well, they, they get an offer. What we do is then we issue a new bank account with OFX. You might know them. They're a pretty big financing company that provides we can.

Speaker 2: 11:11

Well, let's pretend we, let's pretend I do.

Speaker 1: 11:16

And we issue a new bank account which the sellers will then change on their seller central and this is what we use to then get repaid. So every single day will be advancing 80% of the net sales for that day to the sellers On their bank account and then, once Amazon pays us back, we receive this money on the OFX account that we issued. So it's a pretty simple kind of method.

Speaker 2: 11:40

Yeah, it makes sense. So obviously I know you guys are supporting Amazon sellers, but and you mentioned what was the name of the other, the other big company that does the IT goods- back market. Back market. What other platforms are you guys supporting right now?

Speaker 1: 11:54

So we can pretty much integrate with every miracle marketplace.

Speaker 1: 11:58

So we're active on Mano Mano as well, which is quite a Recent partnership that we have, so we're really active and quite a lot of marketplaces really the only ones where there's some that are still work in progress. You know, we're making sure that it's as easy and smooth as possible. The marketplaces that we don't really make a lot of sense for, our maybe eBay, where sellers normally can get paid the next day, so obviously there's no need for solution like ours. We also work with Coughland. Yeah, quite a few really sure that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 12:29

I have kind of two questions that might be sound a little silly but I'm just curious. But one is kind of the common question of like when is the best time, I guess, for a seller for a brand to actually reach out to you guys, you know, because I know there's kind of two sides of that coin. Right, there's the people who, like they don't have the cash and really need that cash to go and quickly, you know, turning over so that they can actually go and grow the business, and maybe they don't have any reserves to pull on or Don't want to pull from other sources. Obviously that pain points right there. But I guess, like is there another side of the coin and this kind of might get a little bit into Kind of the benefits of using something like your guys service, but people maybe, who already have various financing available to them, but why would they want to go and use a solution like this?

Speaker 2: 13:10

Or when would be a good time to go to you, you guys, for something like this? I hope that question made sense. I kind of jumped all over the place.

Speaker 1: 13:16

No, no it does make total sense. Yeah, it's a great question. So, okay, in terms of times of the year, I would say it varies very much depending on the seasonality of the business. You know we have some sellers who sell gardening products, so for them, actually, peak season is obviously spring, summer and winter not so much, but for most sellers I would say this is peak season. You know, coming up to Black Friday, coming up to, you know, christmas, q4 is usually at a time when we see the most registrations and the most on boardings with sellers, understandably.

Speaker 1: 13:50

So, when it comes to, I guess, why would someone rely on financing from us if they have different options? I guess, first of all, getting financing from a company, like store fund, doesn't have to be exclusive, like Mutually exclusive, with getting, for example, alone from a bank. So they are certainly very different kinds of financing options. I will say we, we try to keep things very simple and we do one thing and we do it well, so we don't offer even different kinds of financing. We do one thing, which is factoring, and we only service e-commerce sellers, so we know what we're doing.

Speaker 1: 14:27

This is all we do and for this reason, we understand the specific needs of e-commerce sellers versus other types of businesses that maybe banks Don't know as much or don't try and service as much. So we are quite, you know, knowledgeable in this area and and, yeah, I. So. Another thing I guess compared to a loan is store fund isn't actually a loan, because what we're doing is we're advancing your receivables, so this doesn't appear in your balance sheet, which means it doesn't really devalue your business. It's not a liability and, unlike a loan, you have full flexibility, because if the service doesn't work for you, you can just pause it. Unlike taking out a loan, you have to repay it, no matter what.

Speaker 2: 15:15

Yeah, I feel like that's actually a really good point that I hadn't thought about, because you guys are securing. Obviously the loan is secure because you have the data to show that their sales volume. You're going to. You know they'd sell it unless something happens. They're going to keep selling through their inventory and you guys are going to get your money back as well, so that really makes sense. That seems like a huge benefit.

Speaker 2: 15:34

The other thing I just wanted to call out like just for anyone listening, because I've talked to a lot of companies in both this industry but also others and there's definitely something to important to highlight that you're working with a native, like a company that is built for Amazon sellers is really a big benefit. You know there's a lot of ways you can get loans or financing or what have you, but a lot of times that the terms might be less favorable or there might be just complications versus using something like this, where you guys are built for this industry, I think is definitely going to reduce some friction and make it a lot easier for the average seller. So there's something I wanted to call out to.

Speaker 1: 16:12

And you know just something that you kind of brought to my attention, saying that I was speaking to a seller recently I think maybe last week, two weeks ago and he's again in the electronics business, so he's doing huge volumes, like really good turnovers, but the margins are quite low, which is very, very normal for that kind of sector, and he was telling me that banks are not really willing to finance him because the margins are so low. And so he was saying you know, banks don't really understand the needs of my business. They don't understand that this is normal, this is how it works, and of course we do. So, yeah, he's going to become one of our clients, actually as of next week, so yeah, Are there any big differences on like the?

Speaker 2: 16:55

so I know you guys obviously are just launching the vendor central side. I personally have never sold on vendor central. I've worked with a number of clients who have. But what are? Are there any like nuances or differences that you know about in terms of how your service might work on that side? I believe it's more more so when Amazon is placing a POT as a seller, it's on net terms and so the you know I would assume that that means actually your cycle of getting paid is now going to go from I don't know if it's net 30 or net 60, but significantly longer. So I could see that this is an even more important service on that side. But is it still the same as a daily disbursements or are there differences there?

Speaker 1: 17:33

Yeah, so it will still be daily disbursements. I personally have not yet onboarded a single client on vendor because it's so new, so I wouldn't really know, like all the ins and outs.

Speaker 1: 17:44

but the main difference is that, yes, we of course vendor has a 30 to 60 day payment cycle, so sellers are potentially waiting even longer, which is why this is actually. This has been in the tech pipeline for I want to say two years, like long before I joined the company. We've been saying, like vendors need the service, and I have spoken to lots of vendors myself who thought the service was applied to both and then I had to say, oh sorry, like at this time we can't work together, and hopefully we're now able to help some of those people too.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Yeah, so if there's anyone who's selling on vendor central out there, you should probably reach back out to Julia, if you haven't already, because that seems like I haven't. I don't know if any other companies in the space that are doing it for vendor, but definitely seems like a pain point. I remember when I got my first first actually that job with that IT company is mentioning I had never I've gotten to business school but, to be honest, like I was not, I did not, was not the best student, I had not heard of net 30 terms and so when I heard about that I was like what's, that's a thing, like that is crazy. And then I heard net 60 and you know. So I guess my point is like I understand that it gets.

Speaker 2: 18:50

It gets really hard for on the cash floor side, especially if you got those expensive products and it's Amazon. I mean it's not like you can negotiate the terms. Generally speaking, they pretty much tell you yeah, it's going to be net 60 terms, here's where we're paying you and that's that. So I can see why a service like your SOP. I am kind of shocked that you guys didn't launch with the vendor central side. But yeah, no, that's cool. The other question I guess we haven't really addressed, but what does this all look like from like a cost standpoint, or like a contractual standpoint, like are you guys entering into any kind of agreements or payment terms? Or because it's you know it's structured, if only it's secured by the actual daily sales. How does it actually work from that standpoint?

Speaker 1: 19:31

Yeah, right. So there's no contract. So we do offer full flexibility. Again, this is just because we understand that some businesses are seasonal and you know e-commerce sellers want that full flexibility, I think more than anyone else. So there's no minimum time commitment. We offer the first two weeks of our service for free so that sellers can try that out, and then in that case, you can cancel within the month. If you have the first two weeks free, after that point you're pretty much free to cancel the service or even, if you don't, just want to stop using it forever.

Speaker 1: 20:07

What many of our sellers do is maybe, let's say again, the same example of, you know, guarded product sellers. For them, winter isn't that huge in terms of sales, so they might not need the extra cash flow. So what they want to do is simply pause the service for those three months, start it back again in March and it works quite well for them. So, even in terms of cost, it's something that you can very much manage, depending on your need. When it comes to fees, we have a range. So our range is between 0.1 and 0.2% of net sales. This is a daily fee, so it's applied every day. The main reason for that is that obviously different marketplaces have different payment terms, so even within Amazon, I've seen some variation. To be honest, I'm sure you're aware, as of February, amazon is going to now delay payments by seven days. Yeah, so this is something that's coming up more and more. Some sellers that were able to get paid every day are now coming to us because, as of next year, they won't be able to get paid daily anymore.

Speaker 2: 21:11

Yeah, they're probably pulling their hair up.

Speaker 1: 21:14

Yeah, I listen to a lot of frustrated customers and in a way, of course, it's like I understand where they're coming from, but they're calling me and we're a company that can help with that. So I never want to seem disingenuous when I say look, I do understand that you're frustrated, but of course I'm like well, this works in your advantage and I'm like we're just here to help. We don't actually decide what Amazon does or doesn't do?

Speaker 2: 21:40

Right, well, I get that. You could say the same thing about Seller Candy, right? Like we are here to help people deal with all the problems, right? And I always joke when I'm not on as many sales calls these days, but I always joke that when I'm talking to sellers, I need an Amazon therapist with me, because normally when people are reaching out to us, we've got the proactive people right. We're reaching out because they need help and they're like for seeing, like, oh, my business is growing.

Speaker 2: 22:04

You also have the other side, which is the people who are like my listing just got suspended and I'm super upset and blah, blah, blah, and they're coming to us with a fire of some sort. So I always joke about that. But, yeah, I mean, it's kind of the same deal, right, it's like the pain points that our service helps with are. I mean, it's why we have a business. It's also not that I don't wish that. I don't wish the seller support or seller central experience on anyone, right, so, but Amazon's created an ecosystem and I think they're doing the best they can and making improvements, but there are still a lot of things where the third party solution providers like us store funds you know Seller Candy and a lot of the other companies out there are.

Speaker 2: 22:43

They feel a really crucial lead in a lot of different ways. So I totally get it. But that does give an extra reason for people to reach out to you guys is Amazon is changing that right and, like to be honest, it's kind of shocking that they even I've talked to very few sellers that were on a daily disbursement cycle. Many, I think, kind of the standard is what two weeks normally is that kind of the average that you see yeah, that's the average.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Yeah, then they can, you know, request most sellers. Yeah, bank transfer.

Speaker 2: 23:12

How frequently can you do that? Do you know if the tub you're had? I think is it every seven days, or every three to five days? I can't remember.

Speaker 1: 23:18

I think you can potentially press the button every single day. It's just, amazon will always hold a reserve, so that amount that even if you press the button, it's not available. So this is also something that we finance.

Speaker 1: 23:30

We call it reserve or unavailable balance People. I've heard people call it different things, so that's. Another benefit of our service is, if you have a high unavailable balance which, by the way, amazon sometimes is not predictable so they there's no real way to know how much of that money will become available to you. You can, of course, work out averages, but sometimes it will go up, and just yesterday I was speaking to this seller who said his reserve is now higher than it's ever been. He doesn't know why.

Speaker 1: 24:00

Having a solution like ours, where we finance that amount as well, means you don't have to guess and wonder how much money is going to be available to you. You're just going to have that reliable cash flow and you can use it to. Obviously, stock up faster is one of the main reasons that people want to use our service. So sell more, grow faster. But also maybe a less intuitive way For people who don't actually have to pay their suppliers upfront. If they have the extra cash flow to pay them earlier, they might get really good discounts and sometimes you might find that the discount that they get from their supplier makes up for the fee that they have to pay us and they still get that nice increase in sales. That's a really good point.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Yeah, so you can actually leverage this to your advantage as well. That's pretty cool, and thought about that. In terms of like eligibility who is actually eligible I would assume that you have to be already kind of you know this isn't going to be something that you're going to want to use right out of the gate. If you're just starting on Amazon, this is really probably because they're kind of a dollar amount that you're doing in daily or monthly sales where you guys are, or you guys qualify that person are more likely to, or what do you guys normally look at?

Speaker 2: 25:05

from an eligibility standpoint.

Speaker 1: 25:07

That very good question. So, yeah, you do say correctly, we do want to work with people who have been selling on Amazon for at least six months or more. This is just. You know, there's always a risk involved in financing. We want to make sure that this is a business that's already going and we because our service really makes the most sense after a certain threshold of volumes where you can really see the difference with that financing we're looking at people who are making at least 20,000 in all different currencies, so it can be euros or pounds or dollars per month in net sales. In cases of, like, very seasonal businesses, we could allow a bit of variation. So maybe one month you only do 15k and the next month you do 35. But throughout the course of the year, realistically, we'd like to see at least 20k in net sales per month or yearly equivalent.

Speaker 2: 26:01

Sure, that makes sense. Okay, I've got a kind of tricky question to answer, but I'm going to ask it. So obviously we're assuming a lot that this is for, like the seller, who's doing well, they're on an upward trajectory which we all want to be on. What about the seller that's maybe like you know, they've done well, they're doing 100k a month, but they're seeing either a plateau or actually maybe a slight decline and in hypothetically, let's say, in this situation, they want to use a solution maybe like this, or look into some of these different financing options, because they're going to use that cash flow maybe to go and launch new products to try to stimulate growth. Is that also someone who would be good for a solution like your guys? Or, because of eligibility stuff, would it be wiser for that seller to try to find a different way to get some growth again and then come and take on a solution like your guys? I don't know if you have the answer up the top of your head, but yeah, definitely, that would definitely be someone that we encourage to apply.

Speaker 1: 26:52

We do have these two like pretty hard requirements and unfortunately, under those levels, we can't really help just yet. There's a third that I forgot to mention, which is we can only work with limited companies. We can't work with sole traders, unfortunately. So that's also another thing. But if you were saying someone who's been doing well and maybe they reached a plateau, this is what we're here for.

Speaker 1: 27:17

We understand that every business is different and this is why it's such a case-to-case scenario. There's not a rule to really fix everything, and this is why the first step is to really have a call with me where I go in depth and I try to understand okay, your sales have decreased, like what happened, and a lot of the time, there's very valid explanations as to why that happened. So it doesn't necessarily mean that unless we see that you're growing and growing, then we won't onboard you. Of course, we understand that a service like ours is what can help grow your business even more. So, in a way, businesses who are kind of plateauing and they're like okay, I feel like I've got to a point where growing without external financing isn't really an option anymore, or the growth is a bit slower than I would like. Those would be actually ideal candidates for a service.

Speaker 2: 28:06

That's good to know. Awesome, julia, I'm going to ask you a question that I think is probably heresy to you because you are Italian, but I always ask this question to every one of our guests. So does pineapple belong on pizza?

Speaker 1: 28:18

100% no, and me answering anything other than this would basically result in me losing my passport.

Speaker 2: 28:25

And yeah, I'm not going to question that. Yeah, the government's immediately going to remove your passport.

Speaker 1: 28:31

Immediately. They will have a SWAT team at my door right now, so the answer is no.

Speaker 2: 28:35

Got it. The reason I ask is this is kind of my natural transition into what we call our controversial take session. So I just like to ask every guest if they have some sort of controversial take or maybe something that they feel differently than maybe what you would consider the norm in the industry. And even if it's something you've already said, I just kind of like to ask to see you know we're looking for the outliers, right. If everyone's going this way, maybe we need to be contrary and go the other way. So maybe that doesn't mean pineapple on pizza, but I'm curious if you have an answer to that.

Speaker 1: 29:05

Yeah, so I can think of a couple of things really. The first I've sort of already touched on, and it's what you kind of brought up as well Like why would someone like go to us and not to a bank? There's like a lot of different ways that you can get financing for your business and again, the answer doesn't have to be if you go with us, you can't have any other sort of financing. But I suppose the controversial stance could be banks and traditional financial institutions probably don't understand the needs of e-commerce sellers as well as we do, and so sometimes it can be better to go with a solution that's tailor made for sellers needs.

Speaker 2: 29:42

Really, yeah, 100%. I think that makes sense. To be honest, I, you know I obviously am a little bit biased because I know you guys, but for sure, if I was building my private label brand, I would probably not be going the traditional routes and actually look for again kind of what I said earlier, like someone who is built for this industry because it is, you know, it's unique, it's got its unique challenges, and so I think that having a company that's e-commerce first, so to speak, does make a difference. But yeah, thanks for sharing that.

Speaker 1: 30:08

Yeah, I think another thing that kind of popped into my mind is sometimes I speak to sellers and this is mostly maybe when I do cold outreach. So these are people who don't really know, like, who we are, what we do, and I think initially maybe it's part of you know, being cold called people get defensive. But a lot of the time people approach this from a standpoint of oh well, I don't really need cash flow to keep my business afloat. But the thing is our solution shouldn't necessarily that actually it should not be looked at as a bandaid for a business that's failing without any external help. It should actually be a proactive investment into growing human further.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Like just because we're managing okay without the extra cash flow doesn't mean you couldn't be increasing your sales. Our average of increase over a year is about 53%. But there's people who like double, double, triple their sales. So hugely depends on, obviously, the size they start with and their business model. But you know, that's just. I guess I wish sellers wouldn't look at our solution as a way to be like I'm doing okay on my own, so I don't need help. But it's more something like what could I achieve if I had this extra cash flow? That maybe I don't desperately need, but that could really like yield a pretty good return on investment.

Speaker 2: 31:25

Right, essentially, your gas solution could, for the right type of seller, actually be gasoline on the fire, right? It doesn't necessarily take. You know, using something like this doesn't necessarily mean that you're not doing well or that you need cash flow or anything like that. It could be exactly what you said earlier, right, that this is actually a tool you can utilize to hit that next stage of growth and actually accelerate into it.

Speaker 2: 31:45

I will say that I'm one of those people that you just described, where, when I was building and I, you know, I've built and done private label and a bunch of different things, and I've been in space for a while now but I was always so hesitant to spend, even to spend money on advertising, you know, and it was like I'm making organic sales, we're starting to get some growth. So it took me a while before I was like you know, why are we not spending money on ads? And which was stupid? I mean, this was back in back in my, my business infancy. I but you know, similar kind of mindset. It's like just don't be closed, so close minded to what's out there, right? You never know what solution is really gonna take you to that next level. So I think that's actually a really good point. Any other controversial takes? Are you sure you don't want to revisit the pineapple on pizza? We can turn, we can stop recording so that you can say it can you make me a believer?

Speaker 1: 32:29

Well, if I anyone ever convinced me to put pineapple and pizza, that might have to be my new like, guru Like. If you can convince me to do that, you can convince me to do anything then they need to join your team as a salesperson. Yeah, just yeah, oh, a hundred percent I love it.

Speaker 2: 32:44

Well, julie, I think that kind of brings us to the end of the show. So first off, I just wanted to thank you so much for showing up today and to kind of talk us through a lot of this stuff. I know that always for me, the financing and dealing with the numbers is something I personally always try to outsource and get off my plate because I hate even thinking about it or talking about, but it's crucial. I'm assuming that not everyone listening feels the same way I do, but it's something we don't always talk about or think about because it's not always the most exciting topic. However, you know you've made it exciting today. So I just want to say thank you for coming on and talking a little bit to us and to the audience. But now I want to turn it around to you and just give you a chance to tell us you know where people can find you or what the best way is to get in touch. You know whether it's for you know your resolution or for Italian lessons, either one amazing.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Thank you so much for having me. It was really, really fun. Actually, I might want to start my own podcast. I don't know, I had a lot of fun. So, in terms of contact information, you could find me on LinkedIn. If you just copied the spelling of my name. Lots of people spell it wrong. I know it sounds like it's Julia, but yeah, just don't forget the I In between the G and the U and my email is just my name, dot, my last name at storefundcom.

Speaker 2: 33:52

Perfect, awesome, well, great, julia, thanks again. Thanks so much, and thanks to everyone who's watching. Thank you, cheers. All right, that brings us to the end of this episode. Thanks again to Julia from storefund for joining us today.

Speaker 2: 34:04

We hope that today's insights strategies were incredibly valuable to our listeners. So, as always, thank you for tuning into the Amazon strategist show. If you found value in today's discussion, we kindly request that you leave us a rating review on your favorite podcast player Apple podcast, spotify, google podcast, what have you or if you're watching on YouTube, drop that thumbs up and let us know that you liked this episode. Feedback Definitely means the world to us and really helps us reach new listeners like you. Last but not least, don't forget to follow us on our social media channels for updates behind the scenes content and more links to everything we talked about today. Sound below in the description or show notes and otherwise. That is it for this episode. Make sure you mark your calendars. Join us again next week. We have another really exciting guest coming on the show. I know you guys are gonna love it, so make sure you guys tune back in next week. Until then, this is your host, ben Smith, signing off and happy selling.