👇 GET A COPY OF OUR FREE DTC DEBT PLAYBOOK

👇 GET ACCESS TO OUR FREE CASH FLOW 101 COURSE

https://mailchi.mp/freetogrowcfo.com/ftg-cash-flow-course-sign-up

👇 GET A FREE CFO ANALYSIS

https://freetogrowcfo.com/free-cfo-analysis

📧 JOIN OUR WEEKLY FREE TO GROW CFO NEWSLETTER

https://freetogrowcfo.com/newsletter

🧔‍♂️ WHO IS FREE TO GROW CFO

Outsourced CFO and Bookkeeping services for profit-focused DTC brands.

Scaling a DTC brand is stressful.

With messy books and no CFO on your team you run the risk of…

-Hiring too quickly

-Buying too much inventory

-Scaling ad spend unprofitably

-Running out of cash

And that leads to stressful, sleepless nights. We don’t want that for you.

Free to Grow CFO has given hundreds of DTC brands a plan for scaling alongside healthy profit and cash flow. Our plan will work for you too.

📈 WANT TO INCREASE PROFIT AND CASH FLOW AS YOU SCALE?

Book a Call Now → https://freetogrowcfo.com/book-a-call

🤝 CONNECT WITH JON BLAIR ON LINKEDIN

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

🎥 FOLLOW FREE TO GROW CFO ON YOUTUBE

https://www.youtube.com/@FreetoGrowCFO

🎤 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Episode Summary

If you're scaling a high-SKU catalog on Amazon and watching your cash disappear even as your P&L looks healthy, this episode will hit home.

In this episode of The Free to Grow CFO Podcast, Jon Blair sits down with Luis Fonseca — D1 football player turned multi-brand Amazon operator and co-founder of Vandor Studio — to unpack the hard-won lessons behind building a profitable, cash-efficient Amazon business. They get into why pricing against competitors quietly destroys your margins, how to think about your SKU catalog as a portfolio of capital investments, and what it actually looks like to go from carrying 272 days of inventory with no cash visibility to having a financial model that forecasts within a fraction of a percent. Luis also makes the case for why DTC brands are leaving real money on the table by avoiding Amazon — and why the cannibalization fear is largely a myth backed by a misunderstanding of who actually buys on each channel.

If you want to grow on Amazon without strangling your cash flow, this one is worth your time.

Key Takeaways

-Your SKU catalog is a portfolio of capital investments; any SKU not hitting your margin threshold is capital you should redeploy somewhere better.

-Carrying too many days of inventory is a hidden cash flow killer — visibility into that number is often the first lever a fractional CFO helps you pull.

-Pricing to beat competitors races you to the bottom — price to your margin target and ignore what everyone else is doing.

Episode Links

Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/

Luis Fonseca- https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhfonseca/

Free to Grow CFO - https://freetogrowcfo.com/

T1A - https://www.t1aauto.com/

Transcript

~~~

00:43 Introduction to Luis Fonseca

05:56 Lessons from Early Ventures

09:30 Success with Curated Gift Baskets

13:13 Strategic Insights for T1A