The Hard Middle Years. How Years Five and Six Nearly Broke and Then Rebuilt My Amazon FBA Business

By the time you reach year five of a business journey, something fundamental shifts. The early excitement has faded, the obvious mistakes have already been made, and the business no longer feels fragile in the way it once did. At the same time, it stops being forgiving. You cannot rely on momentum or luck anymore. The cracks that were once hidden by growth start to show themselves very clearly.

Years five and six of my Amazon FBA journey, which for me were 2022 and 2023, were exactly that kind of period. They were uncomfortable, humbling, and ultimately formative. These were the years immediately following Covid, when the world reopened and the artificial conditions that had supported many online businesses quietly disappeared.

During lockdown, ecommerce had enjoyed an unnatural tailwind. People were stuck at home, spending money online by default. At the same time, global shipping was in chaos. Container prices reached historic highs, and something that had once been a background cost suddenly became a dominant line item in the business. Freight that had typically sat at around three or four percent of turnover rose to closer to fifteen percent. That alone was enough to fundamentally alter the economics of the model.

When 2022 arrived and the world opened up again, a second shift occurred. Consumers changed their behaviour almost overnight. People travelled again, ate out again, and spent money on experiences rather than parcels arriving at the front door. Online sales softened across many categories, mine included. Turnover dropped sharply, from around nine hundred and twenty thousand dollars down to roughly five hundred and fifty thousand. It was not a gentle correction. It was a material decline that forced me to look very carefully at what was actually going on inside the business.

What made this particularly challenging was the timing. Shipping rates only really began to come down in the latter half of 2022, meaning I was hit by lower revenue and elevated costs at the same time. Margins were squeezed from both ends, and decisions that had once felt easy suddenly carried far more weight.

Year five was also the first time I used debt finance in the business. Until then, growth had been funded organically, largely through reinvesting profits back into inventory. That approach works well when the business is small and cycles are manageable, but it begins to strain as scale increases. The year before, I had launched the Velistra® Pillow, and it had performed well. Demand was strong and validated the product quickly. However, Amazon is not a business where profits arrive neatly and stay put. Cash flows out long before it flows back in.

As sales increased, stock levels rose sharply. At one point, the value of inventory I was holding doubled, moving from around seventy thousand pounds to roughly one hundred and fifty thousand pounds at any given time. That capital had to come from somewhere, and so I turned to Amazon Lending, Amazon’s own internal finance platform. The rates were competitive, repayments were taken automatically from disbursements, and the process itself was remarkably frictionless. Almost too easy.

At the time, I framed this as a sensible growth decision, which it was. In hindsight, it was also compensating for something else. I did not truly understand my numbers.

That realisation was uncomfortable. I knew revenue. I had a rough sense of margins. I knew when the bank balance felt tight. But this is fundamentally a margins business, a game of small numbers played at scale, and I could not confidently articulate how every pound of profit was constructed. I did not have a precise grasp of contribution margins, true landed costs, or the timing mismatch between cash in and cash out. That gap in understanding bothered me deeply.

Year six became the point where I decided that was no longer acceptable. I rebuilt my financial systems from the ground up, starting with cash flow. Not in a superficial way, but properly. Every inflow, every outflow, and crucially, exactly when each occurred. Cash flow forecasting stopped being a vague exercise and became a discipline. The spreadsheets became more detailed, more granular, and far more honest.

What I learned very quickly was that precision creates confidence. Much of the anxiety in business comes from vagueness. When you cannot see clearly, every decision feels risky. As the models improved, my ability to project forward improved with them. I was no longer guessing. I was making informed decisions based on reality, not hope.

Around this time, I also realised that I had been operating far too much in my own head. When things start to feel unfair or confusing, there is a natural tendency to withdraw and grind harder alone. Instead, I began to actively seek out other people in the Amazon and ecommerce space. I started networking with intent, looking for stories, experience, and perspective rather than validation.

Towards the end of 2023, a chance meeting crystallised this shift. I attended a dinner with around fifty sellers and happened to sit next to someone called Iain. We spoke at length, and I shared the full story of what had been happening in the business. He listened carefully and then suggested I speak to someone called Dan, who ran a community called Titan.

When Dan arrived later that evening, Ian introduced us. Within minutes, Dan was asking pointed questions about my numbers, and within minutes it became obvious that I did not know them as well as I thought I did. What struck me most was how quickly he could identify the issues. From a relatively short conversation, he could see where the business needed to shift.

He pointed me towards resources and frameworks that fundamentally changed how I thought about growth. One realisation in particular stood out. Almost everyone who scales meaningfully in this model uses debt. Not recklessly, but strategically. Organic growth alone is slow because capital simply cannot turn over fast enough to keep pace with opportunity. The question is not whether leverage is used, but whether it is understood and controlled.

The most important operational change that followed came from learning about supplier payment terms. Historically, my terms had been standard. Thirty percent deposit with the remaining seventy percent payable when the cargo left the factory. That structure meant cash was leaving the business long before stock arrived and long before any sales were realised.

I learned how to negotiate. Instead of accepting the default, I renegotiated terms to a ten percent deposit with the remaining ninety percent payable sixty days after shipment. In practice, this meant that in many cases the stock arrived in the UK with around a month to sell before the final balance was even due. The effect on cash flow was immediate and dramatic.

What surprised me most was how straightforward the negotiation was. It was conducted over video calls, post Covid, without travel. I framed it clearly as a win win. Improved cash flow would allow me to invest more in growth, which meant placing larger and more frequent orders with them. I even put together a simple deck to explain exactly how it benefited both sides. I asked for ninety days. They countered with sixty. That was it.

Alongside these financial changes, I made another strategic decision during this period. I launched a second brand. The motivation was seasonality. Bedding and pillows tend to dip during the summer months, which unfortunately coincides with the period when large Q4 orders need to be placed. This created a recurring cash flow pinch at precisely the wrong time of year.

The solution was to balance the portfolio. I launched a gardening brand called Kingswood Green, deliberately targeting a category that performs well during the summer. This helped smooth revenue across the year and reduced pressure on the business during critical ordering periods.

There was also a values based reason behind this move. Gardening products are surprisingly unsustainable, often made with excessive plastic or silicone and packaged in layers of unnecessary waste (think blister packs in garden centres). For an activity that is meant to be good for the planet, this always felt deeply ironic to me. Kingswood Green was designed with a more sustainable ethos, focusing on materials, packaging, and positioning that aligned better with the purpose of the activity itself.

Looking back, if I could whisper one thing to my year five self, it would be this. Learn contribution margins properly. Understand exactly how the cost of selling one unit is constructed, including COGS, freight, duties, and Amazon fees. It still surprises me that I grew the business as far as I did without truly mastering this, but context matters. In earlier years, Amazon was simpler and less competitive. You could get away with less precision. That era is over.

Years five and six were not easy. They were slower, harder, and far less forgiving than what came before. But they were also the years the business became real. Not just something that generated revenue, but something that demanded structure, clarity, and respect. If you find yourself in this stage now, questioning your competence or wondering why everything feels heavier, it may simply mean you are being invited to level up.