Ecom CFO Notebook - Cash Unlocks Benchmark Report

Welcome to this issue of Ecom CFO Notebook – a weekly letter for 7–9 figure ecommerce founders and CFOs, sharing my perspective and stories for profitable growth.

Did someone forward this to you? If you like it, you can sign up here.

Sam here.

Today, we give a little love to balance sheets. For a while, brands could grow without really understanding their balance sheet.

Easy capital. Forgiving suppliers. Fewer tariffs.
You could carry bloated inventory, not care about bad terms, and still come out ok.

That world seems forever ago.
Tariffs are back. Lenders are pulling back. Payment terms are tightening. Costs are up.

And yet most brands (at times, us as Ecom CFO included) still fixate on the P&L.

Only in the last few months have I seen a real shift in focusing on the balance sheet.

As a DTC brand, you won’t find inventory turns, working capital, or the movement of cash anywhere on the P&L.

Same goes for me as a service provider. The P&L might show steady revenue, but real stress shows up in AR piling up or cash tied up in prepaid expenses.

The balance sheet often gets overlooked, and in this environment, it’s where the real bottlenecks live.

A client said to me last week: “We’re profitable on paper… but we don’t feel it in the bank.”

I’ve felt that too.

So I teamed up with David Segal and Highbeam to figure out what’s really going on.
Together, we built a new report that shows how to identify and attack locked-up cash inside DTC brands.

Real numbers from real companies.
Because once you can see the problem, you can actually do something about it.

How we built the report (and why it’s different)

We didn’t just pull generic industry benchmarks from a database and call it a day. We hand-selected five actual clients across a range of revenue sizes to reflect the patterns we’re seeing across the entire client base. Each revenue cohort (under $10M, $10–50M, and $50M+) has at least one representative in the data. 

Too many reports cherry-pick high performers or average everything out into something meaningless. We built this so real brands could see themselves in the data.

If you’ve got $300K in the bank and your inventory turns are slow, then you’ll spot that.

If you’re sitting on $5M cash in the bank and wondering whether that’s too much, then you’ll see that too.

We also layered in public comps (like Warby Parker) for context, but only where it actually helps. For example, we included inventory turnover benchmarks, since that metric is helpful across company sizes. But we skipped months of runway because comparing a $20M founder-run business to Lululemon’s treasury doesn’t tell you anything.

We built this report so you can look at the numbers and say, “Yeah… that’s us.”

Not to make you panic. But to help you see what’s actually going on so you know it’s worth fixing.

The Cash Unlocks Report

We analyzed five real brands across revenue tiers to see where cash is getting stuck. The report looks at three key metrics: inventory turns, months of runway, and working capital (current ratio).

Here’s what immediately stood out to me:

• Inventory is a liability — average turns were just 1.7×. One brand didn’t turn inventory even once all year. Massive opportunity to unlock cash - every extra turn frees up real working capital.

• The cheapest capital is the cash you already own — sweep idle dollars to interest-bearing accounts and you might unlock another full time hire or marketing initiative.

• High months of runway are not badges of honor — define what’s right for the business and do something with the remainder.

The full report breaks down each KPI by company size, shares real benchmarks from $2M–$50M+ brands, and includes tactical next steps to unlock trapped cash.

Next week, I’ll share the biggest takeaways from a deep-dive conversation I had with David Segal (Highbeam President and founder of DAVIDsTEA).

We unpacked what the numbers actually mean and what most founders miss when it comes to cash, terms, and working capital.

Until then, if the report sparks any questions about your numbers, hit reply.
I read every one.

— Sam

1. Find me on LinkedIn

2. EcomCFO provides CFO and accounting support for 7-9 figure ecommerce brands - book a brainstorming session with me here