My cash policy was this: we would always have cash at least equal to two weeks’ sales. (I think this is called an “heuristic” decision in business school.) Any month we didn’t meet the test, I would borrow from Bank of America on a five-year term loan ostensibly secured by store fixtures. But I wasn’t borrowing for fixtures and inventory, as I took

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Before a sale, the only place you’ll see the value of that inventory is on the Balance Sheet under current assets on the inventory line, valued at what you paid for it, as COGS. As soon as some of that inventory is sold, however, inventory on the Balance Sheet decreases because the customer walked out with the product. Inventory decreases, but you

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In April, after the Fashion Trust U.S. awards, she estimated her debt to be about $90,000. Her creditors include factories that are starting to get mad, she said, but also people central to her team, like the designer Andrew Curwen, who is owed a few months’ worth of invoices.