Retail finance, shelves full, doors open

In retail, timing is everything. Buy stock too late and you miss the season, and a slow month can collide with a rent review. We give retailers the speed to buy when it counts.

What retail use fast finance for

Buy stock & inventoryNo property neededTake a bulk-buy discountNo property neededFit-out or renovateWith or without propertyFund a marketing pushNo property neededSmooth seasonal cash flowNo property neededFix a cash-flow gapWith or without property

Best-fit loan types

The stock cycle is the whole problem

Retail is a business of buying inventory months before customers pay for it. Christmas stock is committed in August and paid for in September, and it converts to cash in December if the season goes well and in the following March if it does not. Every retailer is effectively lending money to their own peak.

Suppliers have tightened terms across the last few years while landlords have not, so the window between paying for stock and selling it has widened for many operators. A retailer whose sales are flat can still find cash getting harder purely because of when money moves.

Get the buy wrong and the problem compounds: unsold stock is cash converted into something that now needs discounting. That is why retail funding needs to be sized to the season and repaid by it, rather than taken as an open-ended facility that outlives the stock it bought.

What retailers borrow for

Does online or bricks-and-mortar change the assessment?

Barely, on property-secured lending. The equity behind your existing mortgage and how the loan gets repaid are what matter, and both are the same whether you sell from a shopfront, a warehouse or a website.

It matters more for cash-flow lending, where the assessment reads your bank statements. An online business with steady daily settlements often reads more clearly than a seasonal bricks-and-mortar store with three enormous months and nine quiet ones, even where the store is the more profitable business.

For a retailer with a card terminal, a merchant cash advance is worth knowing about: repayment takes a percentage of daily card and EFTPOS sales rather than a fixed monthly amount, which fits a seasonal pattern better than an amortising loan does. It is not always the cheapest option, but it is frequently the one that survives a bad month.

How much stock funding is the right amount?

Less than most retailers take, and for a shorter term. The instinct with a seasonal facility is to borrow generously and keep the headroom, which feels prudent and is usually expensive. Interest runs on money sitting unused, and stock bought because the facility allowed it is the single most common source of a discounting problem in February.

The number that works is the shortfall between what the season costs to buy and what the business can fund from trading, plus a margin for the sell-through being slower than planned. Not the whole buy, and not the whole facility a lender is willing to write.

The term matters as much as the amount. Write it to when the stock actually converts to cash, with a few weeks of margin, rather than to a round twelve months. A facility that outlives the stock it bought is being repaid out of next season’s buying money, which is how one difficult season becomes two.

Ask two things before signing: what early repayment costs, because a season that goes well should let you clear it early, and what an extension costs, because a season that goes badly will need one. Having both answers in writing at the start removes the only two conversations you are likely to need.

Two fast lanes

1. Check eligibility60 seconds online, with no credit score impact.
2. We pick your fastest laneProperty-secured (up to $5M, no financials) or cash-flow (bank statements).
3. Get a decisionUsually the same business day, with every cost in writing.
4. Get fundedIn as little as 2 hours (cash-flow) or 24 hours (property-secured).

Frequently asked questions