Gary,

You have a typical dilemma. You need on hand inventory to increase the volume of outgoing sales. I can tell by your description you will not find help with "inventory financing" which tends to kick in with a minimum of $500K of inventory.

A bank line of credit can be risky because you may not qualify for the amount you really need, thus leaving you cash starved once again. The very best method to get around this problem is talking to the suppliers. They are in the very best position to understand what you are doing and have the most incentive to be cooperative. You would need to convince them you have a very conservative fiscal approach to your business, have a good pipeline of new business AND this is the most important piece to have in place, you are doing thorough honest credit checks on your customers. You need to show what processes are in place to maintain good creditworthy customers and insist on COD with less creditworthy customers. The discipline to turn down a sale because the account debtor has bad credit.

I have a saying about credit "anybody with no credit will buy anything on credit."

Good luck
Gary
ghonig at ccassociates.com