The Company was an e-commerce accelerator that offered inventory and fulfillment services, channel management, and logistics to manufacturers. It focused on the backyard, outdoor, tool, and appliance categories. It had a partner portfolio of 400+ brands selling through online marketplaces that established a national footprint, with 1-day shipping for 90% of the orders.

The Company had doubled in size twice over the past five years to approach approximately $600M in revenue.

The Company embarked on a plan to develop its own marketplace, focused on outdoor products, as an adjunct to its rapidly growing third-party marketplace business.  Management believed that having a proprietary marketplace - in effect, its brand - would make the Company more attractive to vendors, enabling it to add more and better-known products/brands and thus, facilitating its continued growth, which would also improve margins.

The legacy business was growing incredibly fast, consuming a significant amount of the free cash flow from operations. When the marketplace business was launched, it began consuming additional cash flow beyond that generated from operations, increasing the outstanding balance on the line of credit to nearly $100M.

FDP was engaged in helping manage liquidity (13-week), create a workable financial forecast, and seek out additional liquidity if needed.

Ultimately, the marketplace launched and did not meet expectations.  A reduction-in-force (RIF) followed, and management refocused on the legacy business.  A minority equity investor was brought in to help right-size the balance sheet.

FDP assisted in rationalizing SKUs and headcount, helped build out the purchasing function, and put internal controls in place to create a better supply chain function.

FDP assisted in navigating during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The Company continued to grow and streamline operations until the COVID-19 pandemic.  The Company was a beneficiary of the pandemic, which helped it to break $1B in revenue for the first time.

The banking relationship ultimately moved from workout to commercial lender, and the minority equity investor made a significant return on their investment.