INDUSTRY
Sporting Goods and Games
CHALLENGE
Fulfill its biggest order ever, a make-or-break deal with a superstore.
RESULTS
Landed next-level contracts with Sam’s Club.
SOLUTION
“There’s no way we would’ve been able to fulfill our Sam’s Club order without SellersFunding. Without the Working Capital, we would’ve lost out on millions of dollars in revenue. Partnering with SellersFunding was a game changer for us.”
—Chris Meade, Cofounder of Crossnet
In 2017, two brothers and their childhood friend sat around a fireplace reminiscing about the epic games of foursquare they used to love playing during recess. But this conversation about the past quickly turned into a conversation about the future, one that changed the course of Chris Meade, Greg Meade, and Mike Delpapa’s lives forever.
The trio had a revolutionary idea: a volleyball court divided into four quadrants, merging traditional volleyball with foursquare that became a fun game for kids and adults. And so CROSSNET was born.
What started as a trip down memory lane became what ESPN has called “America’s fastest-growing backyard game.” But the road to scalable growth in the form of annual revenues averaging $10 million and a team of 20+ e-commerce pros, wasn’t always a smooth one.
But as with any successful retail brand, keeping pace with the speed of sales wasn’t always easy. As the orders kept coming, CROSSNET’s leadership team quickly realized the delicate balance between managing inventory and cash flow.
“As the business was starting to scale, we started working with large retailers that were putting in large purchase orders. On our end, that was fantastic. But the question was, how can we go and build the inventory when we didn’t have an adequate capital structure?” says Chris.
At the end of 2021, CROSSNET faced a make-or-break challenge: Find a way to fill the largest order yet or risk losing a major deal to one of its competitors. The client in question? Sam’s Club, the famous members-only warehouse clubs valued at approximately $11 billion.
“We had the biggest order in company history come in from Sam’s Club during Q4 of last year: tens of thousands of units. We immediately thought ‘There’s no way we’re going to have the cash flow to be able to pay our vendor to produce this amount of inventory.’”
With the Sam’s Club order plus other retail demand, CROSSNET needed a fast, reliable funding solution so they didn’t lose these huge deals. The CROSSNET execs met with a few top funding providers but didn’t feel as if any could meet their particular needs.
Then the team came across SellersFunding. Looking at the website, they were impressed by our “breadth of products” (Chris’s words, not ours 😉), including working capital, PO financing, AR factoring advances, and more. Chris and the team knew they had finally found the partner they’d been looking for, a partner who could deliver tailored solutions to fit CROSSNET’s unique needs.
How did the CROSSNET team know they had found their perfect funding partner?
Simple! It was all due to SellersFunding’s:
Highly competitive rates
Fantastic team of experts and advocates willing to make it work funding work
Technology, including a one-stop funding portal with critical financial insights
As Chris put it, “You don’t know what’s going to happen down the road. For us, growing means having the support of a financial partner we can go to and say, ‘Here’s, what’s happening, how can you help?’ We came to SellersFunding with the Sam’s Club opportunity and they said, ‘No problem!’ Having a partner like that, especially when you get a curve-ball thrown at you, and they’re able to just say, ‘We’ll figure it out and make it work for you’ — and deliver on that — is phenomenal.”
The SellersFunding solution that best fit CROSSNET’s needs in this case was invoice factoring. This meant no waiting the usual 60-90 days for payment from retailers. As CROSSNET fulfilled its Sam’s Club orders, it simultaneously used SellersFunding’s capabilities to factor accounts receivable. With no payment delays, CROSSNET always had cash flow to acquire more inventory.
“We were able to set up an easy process with SellersFunding to reduce our leverage and lower interest payments. And at the same time, we got a huge influx of cash from the factor to improve our own working capital status,” explained Chris.
Getting capital from SellersFunding to fulfill the Sam’s Club order showed CROSSNET that selling to large retailers was no longer out of reach. “There’s no way we would’ve been able to fulfill our Sam’s Club order without SellersFunding. Without the working capital on hand, we would’ve lost out on millions of dollars in revenue. Partnering with SellersFunding was a game-changer for us. If we’d been unable to fulfill this order, we would’ve taken a huge hit,” Chris said.
“We’ll be with SellersFunding for the long term — for years and years ahead. Honestly, as long as CROSSNET is in business, we’ll absolutely recommend SellersFunding to any company out there that needs financing options that are cost-efficient and flexible. In the e-commerce and consumer goods space, SellersFunding has been a tremendous partner.”
At SellersFunding, our customers always come first. With our all-in-one e-commerce funding solutions, we support brands worldwide to grow sustainably and at speed. Get in touch today to learn how we can help your store win.
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