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My accountant congratulated me on revenue growth last quarter and I literally laughed out loud on the call because I was sitting there trying to figure out if I could afford to restock my best sellers AND pay for ads in the same month. Spoiler I could not do both so I restocked and just prayed the organic traffic would carry me lol.
My parents saw my shopify dashboard once and now they think I'm rich and keep asking me when I'm buying a house. Meanwhile I'm over here choosing between ordering enough inventory to not run out during Q4 or having actual cash to pay myself something reasonable. The revenue number looks great on paper but so much of it goes right back into product that sits in my warehouse waiting to sell and the cycle just repeats itself every single month.
The business isn't even doing badly which is the annoying part. People buy, they come back, nobody is complaining. But every dollar that comes in I have to immediately spend on more product to replace what sold and then order extra because what if next month is bigger, and then it is bigger but all that means is I spent more on inventory again. It's like a trap I keep walking into voluntarily and somehow being surprised every time.
A friend of mine who runs a catering company went through something similar and told me this is more of a strategy problem than a money problem, she did some kind of business assessment I think with cultivate advisors and said it helped her figure out where her cash was actually going. I keep meaning to look into it but I've been too busy restocking inventory lol. If anyone has figured out how to run an ecommerce business without living in a permanent state of cash stress please tell me your secrets.