4.7× runway extension via working capital surgery
Profitable DTC brand strangled by inventory. We re-engineered payment terms, vendor cadences, and inventory policy, without a layoff and without a raise.
- EBITDA-positive but cash-negative; 142 days of inventory tying up £3M.
- Three SKUs accounted for 71% of stockouts and 48% of returns.
- Suppliers on NET-15, customers paying in 38 days on average.
- Inventory reorder logic lived in a single planner's spreadsheet with no audit trail.
- Wholesale channel growing 60% YoY but with cash conversion 22 days slower than DTC.
Cash leakage audit
AI-driven scan across AP, AR, and inventory feeds isolated £840K of avoidable working-capital drag in the first two weeks.
Supplier renegotiation
Moved 11 strategic suppliers to NET-45 in exchange for forecast visibility and consolidated POs.
Inventory policy rewrite
Reorder points reset by SKU velocity; tail-SKU cull on 28% of catalog with the lowest margin contribution.
AR acceleration
Wholesale channel moved to 2/10 net-30 terms, with automated dunning and a 7-day escalation protocol.
A premium DTC apparel brand based in London, three years post-launch, growing 31% YoY on £18M trailing revenue. EBITDA-positive on paper, but operating cash had gone negative for four consecutive months. The founders had been quoted £3.4M for an asset-based working capital line at 12.5%, and were three weeks from signing it when we were introduced by a board member.
- Week 1–2
Cash audit
£840K of avoidable drag identified across AP timing, returns, and stock concentration.
- Week 3–4
Supplier negotiation
11 of 14 strategic suppliers accepted NET-45 in exchange for a rolling 12-week forecast.
- Week 5–7
Inventory policy live
Reorder points reset by SKU velocity. Tail-SKU cull executed on 28% of catalog.
- Week 8–10
AR redesign
Wholesale moved to 2/10 NET-30. Automated dunning and a 7-day escalation tree.
- Week 11
Cash position recut
Operating cash up £2.1M. Working-capital line cancelled before signing.
- Cash position improved by £2.1M in 11 weeks.
- Inventory days fell from 142 to 88; sell-through up 17%.
- Runway extended from 4.2 months to 19.8 months, no raise needed.
- Working capital line cancelled; £425K in projected interest expense avoided.
- Gross margin expanded 340 bps from the tail-SKU cull alone.
- 01
Most DTC cash problems are inventory problems wearing a finance costume.
- 02
Suppliers will give you terms in exchange for predictability, most founders have never asked.
- 03
The cheapest credit line is the one you don't take.
"We thought we needed to raise. We actually needed to run the business properly. CapMaven found £2M sitting inside our own balance sheet."
Did you have to discount inventory to clear it?+
Only 6% of the tail-SKU cull went out at discount. The rest was redirected to a single off-price partner under a pre-negotiated framework that preserved channel discipline.
How did the suppliers react to the NET-45 ask?+
Eleven of fourteen accepted within two weeks. The lever was a rolling 12-week forecast, suppliers value visibility more than 30 days of float.
Is this repeatable without an embedded operator?+
The policy is. The discipline rarely is. We hand off a documented inventory and AR playbook, but most clients retain a fractional CFO touchpoint to keep the weekly cash cadence honest.
Your case starts here.
Two weeks. Three scenarios. One honest read on your numbers.
The CFO Diagnostic gives you the same artifact every case above started with, a cash model, a unit-economics teardown, and a capital-readiness scorecard.
Start here,
Stop guessing. Start knowing.
Book a free 20-minute discovery call, or go straight to a $400 CFO Diagnostic. The Diagnostic delivers a working read of your cash position, runway, and top 3 financial risks within two weeks. Whether you engage further or not, it's the clearest financial picture most founders have ever seen.