Home: Message List - 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

madereal — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:17:59 GMT

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Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

findfunding99 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:35:59 GMT

Hello V-Guru,
First I want to Congratulate you on your success. It does appear however,that you have used your personal assets to fund and obtain credit for your business and I have a few sugesstions. Structure a corporation or LLC thus reducing your personal liabillity, build corporate credit and establish trade lines to build your business credit profile thus obtaining a paydex score of 80 or higher, obtain corporate credit by utilizing a network of contacts in the banking industry.

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

v-guru — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:52:00 GMT

NatOnline,

Well, since I posted the 15 site number, we are up to 24 websites (with several more in development) and our revenues are up from 250k to more than 400k per month. Most stores are niche sites offering specific products focused around a niche. We do operate a couple sites that function as a mass merchandise / offer-everything site.

Thanks,
V-Guru

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

M1S96F1 — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:54:43 GMT

The problem Vguru is that your caught in no-man's land. Your beyond the SBA but too small for most banks. I have relationships with private lenders who are asset based lenders. One in particular will lend against receivables,inventory, equipment and is much cheaper than a factoring company. The problem is that most banks are looking to do corporate loans of $5 million and above. Right now, you don't have the financials to support that type of loan. The lenders I deal with are in the $5million and below loan range.Please contact me at www.msfcapitaladvisors.com so we can discuss further.

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

NatOnline — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 16:13:06 GMT

Hello V-guru,

When you said "We sell a wide range of products and operate 15 websites" are they the same products on your 15 sites, or different themed products?.

This is a very interesting thread, I wish to get many advises from you

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

loan guy — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 22:50:16 GMT

v-geru,

Seems to me like you have really done your homework and you just have not found the right source for your current needs. Your business model is proven and you have a strong tract record of making money. Its obvious that you have put alot of sweat equity into your business. You just need a shot to get your business to the next level. email me cory@walkerlender.com
--www.phoenixfinancialpartners.com

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

moogrdotcom — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 14:21:01 GMT

You should never have to pre-pay for return labels. Fedex, UPS and USPS offer free return labels with tracking that are only paid for when used. USPS even has a service you can integrate with your website to download PDF labels that your customers can tape onto a package and you can track the returns that way. USPS is somewhat more affordable for return shipping and doesn't charge for saturday/residential pickup or fuel surcharges. Fedex ground though is getting really competitive on pricing/volume though!

Automation is the key. Print those return receipts, have the customer fill out the return form. Make it as self service as possible. If you don't include it in the box, do it through the website in a self-service setup.

Use a CRM system to create exception reports that your support/customer service group can use to be pro-active on. Track how many orders get back ordered, track how many are taking longer than x days to receive confirmation. Track signature required packages. Track which customers demand the most service and why and integrate this logic into your business intelligence.

We had to switch from UPS to USPS for the holidays because UPS streached our shipments out to 9-10 days for residential and without an automated system to capture this and see "re-scheduled" shipments we would have had to manually check shipments to capture this. Had a few upset customers but were able to change new orders to meet delivery dates and update our customers on reason for delay.

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

v-guru — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:31:23 GMT

We are shipping about 3,000 shipments per month (this is non-holiday) and we were told by our shipping carrier that the return label would cost us about $8 each at the point of creation of the label and then we would have to cancel them by tracking number if they were not used (after our return policy expires). This is about $24k a month float on potential returns. Have you found a less painful (cost and time) way to do this?

Yeah, with all of the sites we operate it presents a bit of a bear on the backend integration. We have looked at Netsuite and a couple other systems that allow for consolidated backend on multiple front-end sites. I would love to any ideas on this.

Normal customer service issues are lost packages, returns, returns tracking and etc.

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

moogrdotcom — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 17:05:11 GMT

What is your normal customer service issue?

Have you tried including return postage with everything shipped? That way your CS department doesn't have to take a call and process it manually? Do you get the same question over and over? What is your typical support scenerio?

As far as automation - thats going to be hard with as many sites that you have. I used to run a couple but have since dwindled it down to one site that i can market & integrate fully.

Re: 3rd anniversary, more than 300% YOY growth, profitable, needs growth capital

CorpCons08 — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:53:07 GMT

There is no reason to spam the board where it's not warranted.
This is a topic about lending, not merchant service processing.
Please do not violate the TOS. Post a separate topic. Thank you.

CC08