An established ecommerce business can generate millions of dollars in annual sales and still run short of cash. Inventory has to be paid for long before customers buy it, and until it sells, the money stays tied up in warehouses and fulfilment networks.
For a lender, that inventory raises a harder question than how much of it there is. What will each product sell for, how quickly, and at what margin once marketplace fees are paid?
AccrueMe, an ecommerce-focused private credit firm founded in 2018, has built its underwriting around answering that question.
The company began with small profit-sharing investments in online sellers. It now provides multiyear credit facilities to established brands, exclusive distributors, and sophisticated resellers. According to the company, the average annual revenue of its portfolio companies has increased significantly over the last few years.
From small checks to multiyear credit facilities
AccrueMe brought together two kinds of experience. Twin brothers Ben and Sam Kotch brought ecommerce operating experience, while fellow co-founders Eric Kotch and Don Henig brought finance and lending expertise, including Henig’s more than 30 years in the mortgage industry. Ben and Sam now run the business day-to-day. Ben concentrates on underwriting and model design, and Sam leads business development, partnerships and relationships with portfolio companies.
In its early years, AccrueMe says its earlier investments included relatively small amounts to small sellers in exchange for a share of their profits, but the company moved away from that model for two reasons. Businesses with a longer operating history could take larger investments with less risk, and the market itself was consolidating around experienced operators facing more sophisticated competition.
Industry data points the same way. According to Marketplace Pulse, 165,000 new sellers launched their first product listing on Amazon in 2025, the lowest annual total since the research firm began tracking in 2015. A separate analysis found that the number of sellers across Amazon’s global marketplaces with $1 million or more in annual sales grew from about 60,000 in 2021 to more than 100,000.
AccrueMe says its investments now typically range from six figures into the millions and provide e-commerce working capital structured around a borrower’s growth plans, including for multichannel businesses operating in the U.S. and Canada.
Valuing inventory one product at a time
AccrueMe finances businesses selling across Amazon, Shopify, Walmart, TikTok Shop, and other platforms. It uses API connections and other operating data to help streamline the underwriting process for borrowers.
That data feeds a system that values each stock-keeping unit, or SKU, instead of accepting a seller’s total inventory figure at face value. For each product, the model draws on:
- Historical sales for the SKU and the business’s marketplace accounts, including seasonal patterns.
- Inventory on hand and how stock levels affect sales velocity.
- Historical and current selling prices, along with historical and current fees.
“We build a model that basically says, ‘Is this inventory liquid and profitable?’” co-founder Ben explains. “If it is, then it’s good collateral for our investment. If it’s not, then we don’t invest against it.”
The products that pass count toward the borrowing base, which is, in asset-based lending, the pool of eligible assets that determines how much a business can draw on its credit facility. The broader assessment can also take in marketplace receivables, banking data and cash flow. Before making an offer, AccrueMe reviews the company’s financial statements and completes identity checks on the business and its owners.
That product-level view shapes what AccrueMe asks of a borrower. According to Ben, traditional lenders sometimes rely on on-site inventory audits or inventory counts and need time to get comfortable with a business that depends on a marketplace it doesn’t control. AccrueMe works from the sales and inventory data those platforms already produce.
For most of its borrowers, inventory is the main asset. And analyzing it product-by-product is what gives the company confidence in each investment.
Turning underwriting experience into software
AccrueMe built its system from scratch, and it has changed considerably since the first version, shaped by the company’s experience financing ecommerce businesses. Ben works out how the model should be organized and how its formulas should work, and he remains responsible for the financial reasoning behind it.
Gaurang Bhatt leads the development team that builds it. He joined AccrueMe as an intern in 2019 while studying at Columbia University and was running the technology team within a few years.
The team has experimented with AI to improve its seasonality predictions, but the core of the model is statistical, refined through years of experience across thousands of ecommerce businesses, according to the company.
“A lot of it is traditional statistical analysis, almost like regression modeling, with layers of things we’ve learned from our own experience over the years,” Ben says. “We’re constantly tweaking it.”
Once a business’s accounts are connected, the product-level analysis runs in seconds, but that calculation is only one part of the financing process. The financial review and identity checks still take place, however quickly the product analysis runs.
That combination of financial judgment and software carries through after funding, when the same analysis helps AccrueMe assess and monitor larger, more complex businesses over the life of a facility.
Financing built around the operating cycle
Ben says expansion is the most common reason established operators seek ecommerce financing. A business preparing for the holiday season may need double or triple its normal inventory; others are launching a product line or entering a new market. In each case, the cash goes out well before the sales come in.
Repayment structure determines how much of that cash stays in the business. AccrueMe’s facilities can include multiyear interest-only periods and, where available, the option to defer required payments, including interest. The aim is to keep capital working through the inventory cycle, not draw it out through frequent repayments. Ongoing visibility into inventory and sales helps AccrueMe offer that flexibility while monitoring the assets supporting its facilities.
Refinancing is also, according to the founders, another common reason businesses approach the company, particularly when existing repayment obligations are putting pressure on cash flow.
Pricing is the other variable. According to co-founder Sam, borrowers can mistake a fixed financing fee for an annual interest rate: a $7,000 fee on $100,000 looks like a 7% loan, but if the balance is repaid within a few months, the effective annual cost is far higher. Comparing offers means weighing the fee or interest charged, the repayment period and how the outstanding balance falls as payments are made. AccrueMe’s facilities use simple annual interest, replacing the profit-sharing terms of its early model.
Once a facility is in place, AccrueMe follows the business through the same data connections it uses in underwriting.
“Our system analyzes inventory, sales, and other key data points multiple times a day to monitor the company’s financial health and compliance with the terms of its credit facility,” Sam says. “This analysis is automated, helping us identify emerging issues early and work with borrowers to address them.”
Automated borrowing-base reporting reduces the manual reporting required from borrowers. Portfolio companies can also reach Sam and Ben directly by phone and text.
Together, the data and the direct contact let AccrueMe adjust as a borrower’s circumstances change, so the financing can keep pace with the business as it grows.
Credit that matches a more mature market
Under co-founders Ben Kotch and Sam Kotch, AccrueMe has moved from small profit-sharing investments to multiyear credit facilities, following a seller market that has shifted toward larger, more experienced operators. Its product-level underwriting, designed by Ben and built by Gaurang Bhatt’s team, gives it a view of what each item in a borrower’s inventory is likely to earn. That visibility into inventory liquidity and profitability gives AccrueMe greater confidence to offer flexible repayment structures.
For established ecommerce businesses weighing their options, the useful questions are how well a lender understands their inventory, how closely it follows the business after funding and whether its repayment terms fit their operating cycle. Ecommerce companies have grown into larger, more complex businesses than the small sellers AccrueMe first backed, and their financing needs have grown with them.
AccrueMe’s approach rests on the idea that lending to these companies works best when it starts from the data that already runs them: what each product sells, how quickly it moves and how much cash it takes to keep it in stock.
Investing involves risk and your investment may lose value. Past performance gives no indication of future results. These statements do not constitute and cannot replace investment advice.
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