If I understand you correctly, you are overextended on your credit personally and as such do not wish to give a personal guarantee to your business creditors. Your business is in financial straits unable to get personal financing unless you personally co-sign...

Am I misunderstanding the situation. If so, set me straight.

If not... co-sign the loan.

If you are certain the business is going to continue generating the revenues it has been generating and you are certain that the drop in sales is temporary and recoverable, then you don't really seem to have a problem.

Thoughts I did have from a marketing standpoint...

Why aren't you supplying anyone but web customers and why to "mostly" non-profit organizations...

Are you fair trade certified? If not, why not?

Do you have an up to date business plan... I ask this loosely because if you did, you would not be wondering what to do, you'd have a ready road map in your plan. If your answer is that you have a business plan, it's obviously not working and my first suggestion is to update it.

You might want to consider sitting down with an operations and/or marketing consultant to tweak your business model so that it will work? If you ARE working with TransFair, I suggest sitting down with them and seeing if they can't help offer some solutions; $125,000 is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but when farmers are relying on you for their market, Transfair would have a vested interest in helping you stay in business... If you aren't with Fair trade, you might want to get with them, it will give you access to suppliers and purchasers as well as mentors, support etc.

Finally, my biggest niggling question is; why are your sales off 50%? If you don't know the answer to this question, you want to find out.

I have about a thousand other thoughts, but I think these comments are enough to chew on for one day.

T

Tina Brooks, VP Marketing
Brooks Pepperfire Foods, Inc.
Makers of Peppermaster Hot Sauces
http://www.peppermaster.com

Eat more peppers!