— Blog

Brand finance, capital, and growth.

Ben Tregoe on brand finance: capital strategy, inventory, margins, cash flow, and building consumer brands that generate cash.

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Start here · The capital strategy guide

Judge capital by the growth it enables.

Ben's field guide to inventory financing and every other capital option: the three questions to ask, how to compare offers, and why price comes last.

Read the guide

91 posts

August 12, 2026 · Operations, Logistics

Fix how you code inventory

Accounting will code inventory invoices as expenses for several reasons. You may not be aware it’s happening. And you may not be aware of the implications and benefits of fixing it.

July 31, 2026 · Credit & Loans, Fundraising

An Opinionated Compendium of the Best Guides and Directories

Resources we have created or sourced to help founders better understand and navigate brand finance and capital challenges.

July 29, 2026 · Operations, Logistics

The 7 Most Common Mistakes in Parcel Contracts

Guest Post by AJ Hellow from Rate Shepherd. AJ is an expert in parcel contracts and negotiates parcel contracts for brands.

July 6, 2026 · Credit & Loans

An Opinionated Guide to Surviving a Cash Crisis

If your brand is facing a severe cash crunch, your enemy is time. In a restructuring or turnaround scenario, speed is your only real asset. You cannot afford to waste days drafting complex...

July 6, 2026 · Exits, Strategy

An Opinionated Guide to Preparing for an Exit

This guide is a result of my experiences in selling my own companies as well as leading the Corp Dev function in the sale of company where I was not a founder. I have been an Interim CFO and...

June 21, 2026 · Capital Efficiency, Credit & Loans

Field Guide for How to Think About Capital for Brand Growth

A field guide for scaling consumer brands on how to think about inventory financing, and every other capital option, based on the growth it unlocks, not its sticker price.

May 13, 2026 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

Inventory IRR

I would expect blank stares if I asked a brand finance person what their Inventory IRR is, but it’s my favorite pet metric because it distills into a single number the potential of the brand’s...

May 1, 2026 · Data, Margins

Latest Elephant Herd Index

April 24, 2026 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

PMMF Not PMF (Product Market Fit)

We all use the term, but what do we actually mean? It’s a notoriously squishy term that was popularized in tech with VC’s, so it makes sense that people often cite Marc Andreesen’s definition:

March 9, 2026 · Credit & Loans

IRR? APR? How to price your capital

Question 1

March 6, 2026 · Capital Efficiency, Fundraising

Judge Capital By Growth Enabled

How much growth does this capital enable?

March 2, 2026 · Capital Efficiency, Strategy

How You Think of Capital is Wrong

“What’s the APR? What’s the rate?”

December 19, 2025 · Strategy, Margins

Amazon’s Compounding Cost Reduction Wave

How do you develop 7 points of margin while building a 70% cost advantage on your competitors?

December 11, 2025 · Strategy, Capital Efficiency

Finding Your Flywheel

Amazon’s "secret sauce" was drawn on a napkin in 2001 when Jeff Bezos sketched a diagram of Amazon’s flywheel.

December 8, 2025 · Operations

Wal-Mart understands incentives

$620K

November 18, 2025 · Strategy

TAM Exhaustion

The percentage of all beverages

November 11, 2025 · Strategy, Capital Efficiency

Customers are the assets that count

The accounting is misleading. Accounting standards say that marketing is an expense and that your inventory is your biggest asset.

November 6, 2025 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

Golden Zone? Death Zone? Your zone determines your future

I can tell you what your future will look like by knowing which zone you are in.

November 4, 2025 · Strategy, Margins

The 5 Holy Laws of Models (part 2)

A financial model with a balance sheet and cash flow is the most critical tool for every brand leader.

October 31, 2025 · Data, Strategy

Models are crystal balls (part 1)

A well conceived model can be a crystal ball showing you potential futures. And you control how good your crystal ball is.

October 30, 2025 · Margins, Strategy

Get to Real not Ramen Profitability

One of the biggest lies founders tell themselves is around profitability. I know because I have told it to myself.

October 29, 2025 · Strategy

StitchFix focuses on good customers

Can you grow by focusing on better customers not just more customers?

October 28, 2025 · Margins

Why the low product margins?

I talk about it with founders; read about it in posts and listen to it on podcasts. How does something so central to the entire business - how should we price our products - get so screwed up?

October 27, 2025 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

AI’s impact on brand finance

How will AI impact brand finance?

October 24, 2025 · Logistics

AI’s impact on Ops

The WSJ had a super interesting piece about the impact of AI on supply chains where the authors posit that AI is going to upend Wright’s Law.

October 23, 2025 · Strategy

Will AI end the apprenticeship model?

OpenAI announced Project Mercury in late October 2025 (Bloomberg article). The idea is simple. ChatGPT can produce sophisticated financial models in Excel, but the models have errors and...

October 22, 2025 · Strategy

Questions we fear answering

I will bet that 90% of brand founder unhappiness comes down to failing to answer these two questions honestly.

June 17, 2025 · Strategy

Small But Mighty Cash Flowing

I hope more founders embrace the goal of building a brand that

June 12, 2025 · Strategy, Capital Efficiency

What is a Brand?

Brand is the most under defined word in ecomm. A working definition of brand, the thinking behind it, and how to make it actionable.

June 3, 2025 · Strategy, Operations

Designing Incentives

“Coin operated.”

May 29, 2025 · Strategy, Operations

Product Focus Works

Rhode’s growth is phenomenal. From zero to $210 million in net sales in 3 years is a stunning success. And a billion dollar exit is a fantastic finish.

May 22, 2025 · Strategy

Value to you is the only value

“50% of Shopify businesses are worth $0” - Fan Bi

May 12, 2025 · Margins

Your best products subsidize your worst

“We’re first purchase profitable” said the Head of Marketing.

May 8, 2025 · Strategy

Best Customers or New Customers?

How much should we focus on our best customers versus new customers?

April 29, 2025 · Capital Efficiency, Strategy

Wharton Boy Learns About Inventory Turns and Cash

“You know what I care about Wharton Boy?”

April 24, 2025 · Strategy

Culture Matched to Incentives Win

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”

April 22, 2025 · Capital Efficiency, Margins

Reducing Cash Flow Ups and Downs

In this video, I explore:

April 17, 2025 · Data, Capital Efficiency

Death by Inventory Part 2

“It’s always the same story. The company accumulates too much slow moving inventory, then suddenly goes bankrupt.”

April 14, 2025 · Capital Efficiency, Margins

Is it Margin or Cycling or Both?

Margins or capital cycles.

April 11, 2025 · Capital Efficiency, Margins

Spin Your Capital Cycles Faster

Imagine two companies with the exact same Income Statement.

April 7, 2025 · Data, Margins

13 Week Cash Flow Model Resource

@eric__andrews is a wealth of information. He has a ton of good and helpful videos and offers courses as well.

March 27, 2025 · Strategy

It’s not knowing what; it’s knowing how

I read The Jolt Effect last week. It’s by one of the co-authors of The Challenger Sale which is a super popular sales book. The premise of the book is that in their research of thousands of sales...

March 20, 2025 · Strategy, Margins

Unit economics unlock all levers

In our effort to reduce complexity and wrap our heads around our businesses, we simplify to ratios and percentages. Percentages and ratios can be helpful, but risk boxing in our thinking and...

March 19, 2025 · Strategy, Margins

Planning for Profit

“Failure to plan is planning to fail.”

March 13, 2025 · Strategy

Lessons from Starbucks Turnaround

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on the Starbucks turnaround

March 12, 2025 · Strategy

Putting Price First

The Porsche Cayenne is an undeniable hit for Porsche. Considered heresy by some when launched in 2002 the Cayenne today comprises over a third of all Porsches sold globally.

March 4, 2025 · Operations, Capital Efficiency

“Can’t shrink your way to success” and other lies we tell ourselves

“Can’t shrink your way to success”

March 3, 2025 · Operations, Margins

Cutting Expenses

2 wrong ways and 1 right way to cut expenses

February 27, 2025 · Operations, Strategy

How many finance & accounting people should you have?

There are few brand founders who have adequately invested in finance and accounting.

January 30, 2025 · Operations, Capital Efficiency

Death by inventory Part 1

“It’s always the same story. The company accumulates too much slow moving inventory, then suddenly goes bankrupt.”

January 24, 2025 · Strategy, Exits

FCF > Exit

Episode 92 of The Operators is jam-packed with great insights and commentary. My top takeaways:

December 19, 2024

Generate more cash through better explanations

The hardest part of operational finance is convincing people to turn prefactual concepts into today’s actions.

December 12, 2024 · Margins, Operations

Returns & Refunds

The owner stopped, bent down and picked up the penny, then turned to my friend “if you aren’t the type of person picking up pennies in the parking lot, then you aren’t going to make it in this...

November 26, 2024 · Credit & Loans

How to: Dwight

A common distinction between credit products is around their type and terms. We talk about Merchant Cash Advances, Factoring and multiple flavors of short term lending products from fintechs. But...

November 13, 2024

How to: Ramp

Ramp is super interesting for brand builders. Think corporate card meets expense and travel management meets bill.com meets credit products. And sometime later this year they will add banking to...

November 12, 2024

How to: dash.fi

Amazingly, you can sometimes have too much cash. And sometimes maybe you don’t have too much, but you have all you need.

November 6, 2024 · Credit & Loans

How to: Parker

Parker has been super thoughtful in how they built their credit products. And I like that they have not been afraid to bring to market several offerings. I think this gives them more data and...

October 29, 2024 · Credit & Loans

How to: Rosenthal

You must be doing something right when you have financed brands for 86 years.

October 17, 2024 · Credit & Loans

How to: Wayflyer

In 5 short years Wayflyer has become the 800 pound Irish gorilla of ecomm working capital. Based in Dublin, Wayflyer quickly expanded internationally and operates in the US, Canada, UK, several...

October 14, 2024 · Credit & Loans

How to: Porter Capital

Porter focuses on AR or Invoice factoring and are a good fit for brands whose retail accounts include mass retailers such as Target.

October 11, 2024 · Credit & Loans

How to: Factoring

If you are DTC focused, your Cash Conversion Cycle is probably some version of:

September 26, 2024 · Credit & Loans, Capital Efficiency

How to: MCA’s

You need money and you need it fast. But you are worried about making a mistake. This post will help you make a better decision and sleep at night.

June 26, 2024 · Margins

Chargeback Dreaming

Chargebacks and ‘Friendly Fraud’ suck.

June 20, 2024 · Strategy, Capital Efficiency

Ruthless Prioritization

Eventually there’s a laundry list.

May 24, 2024 · Strategy, Data

Understanding High Value Customers Part 2

In Part 1 I talked about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of calendar-based first purchase cohort analysis in understanding high value customers.

May 23, 2024 · Strategy, Operations

Understanding High Value Customers Part 1

In my previous post, I argued that brand is the predisposition of a group of people to buy.

May 13, 2024 · Strategy

Defining Brand

Brand is the most under defined word in ecomm.

May 9, 2024 · Strategy, Operations

Goals define strategy define outcome

What is the purpose of the company? What is the goal?

May 8, 2024 · Capital Efficiency

Compounding drives success

“Compounding is the 8th wonder of the world.” Mitch Rales, co-founder of Danaher.

May 6, 2024 · Capital Efficiency, Margins

Capital, Cash and Growth. Tuning the Machine.

How well do I use my capital to generate sales?

April 30, 2024 · Equity, Exits

Buy Meta ads or the stock?

Of all the money ‘invested’ in Meta ads by DTC brands, would they have been better off just buying Meta stock?

April 25, 2024 · Equity, Exits

The folly of multi-brand fashion online?

“Selling fashion online from a multi-brand platform is a bad business, as the disastrous experience of Farfetch demonstrates,” Bernstein Analyst Luca Solca (LinkedIn, @LucaSolca)

April 16, 2024 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

Lessons from a Retail Legend

Has there been a more influential CFO in retail than Richard Galanti from Costco?

April 2, 2024 · Data, Margins

How close to insolvency are you? The Altman Z-Score

A quick scan of this list and the negative scores might give you a clue as to what the table means. Not good.

March 25, 2024 · Capital Efficiency, Margins

Manage to cash

Of the god metrics of ecomm, Zeus = Cash. Contribution Profit sits at Cash’s feet.

March 13, 2024 · Exits, Equity

Are you building a brand or an ad arb business?

Are you building a brand or an ad arbitrage business?

March 1, 2024 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

Cracking the formula

“Red Bull soon cracked the formula for the whole sport. It consisted of four essential elements:

February 27, 2024 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

3 lessons for brand leaders: ELF

e.l.f. has returned an incredible 651% in the past 2 years with its share price rising from $27 to $200.

February 21, 2024 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

Hermes v The World

The numbers are staggering. When you look at the financial performance of Hermes versus its luxury peers, the numbers are simply staggering.

February 8, 2024 · Data, Margins

The Unhappy 13: Lessons from poor performance

These are the 13 companies in the Elephant Herd Index that had both (a) negative 12 month returns and (b) 3 month returns below the S&P 500 which makes for unhappy investors.

February 7, 2024 · Equity, Margins

The Elite 5 and Return on Capital

5 ecommerce and retail brands have more than doubled the S&P 500 return over the past 12 months.

February 2, 2024 · Exits

Quick Guide: Groundwork for Exits

There’s an adage that great companies are bought not sold. Is this true?

February 1, 2024 · Exits

For Founders Feeling Below Average

This post is for the founders who want to exit in the next three years but suspect they will get below average multiples.

January 30, 2024 · Fundraising, Equity

Multiples!

This morning I caught up with an investment banker focused exclusively on emerging consumer brands. You would be familiar with the logos on their page.

January 17, 2024 · Margins, Capital Efficiency

The question you must answer

Which quadrant are you?

January 15, 2024 · Capital Efficiency, Margins

Solving the Return on Capital Riddle

Of course that’s not how you view your brand. You have awesome products, a big market, great customers and a hard-working team. You are changing the world!

January 11, 2024 · Credit & Loans

Quick Guide to Debt Optimization

The good news is there are more credit options than ever before. Credit exists for every stage from early revenue through bankruptcy. And thanks to banking regulations, 2023’s regional banking...