Cash flow gaps kill more businesses than bad ideas. How two agri-entrepreneurs turned payment term headaches into a platform for scale
They saw it before most people did — a gap in the agricultural supply market that wasn't being served. Two entrepreneurs moved fast, sourcing essential consumables for the rural sector and building relationships with the buyers who mattered: PGG Wrightson, RD1, and other national distributors.
Within months, they weren't chasing orders. Orders were chasing them.
But every win came with a catch. Pay the overseas supplier upfront. Wait 60 to 90 days to get paid. Repeat. Scale that across a growing order book, and suddenly you're not running a business — you're running a high-stakes juggling act where one missed payment could collapse everything you've built.
The vision was clear: become the go-to supplier for ag consumables across New Zealand. The execution was working. The problem was the math. Growth required cash before cash arrived. And the faster they grew, the wider that gap became.
They weren't naive about it. They knew financing was part of the game. So they went to the banks with 18 months of solid trading history, confirmed purchase orders, and accounts with some of the biggest names in the industry.
The bank's response? "We'll lend — but he needs to put his house up."
Not "the business." Not "both partners equally." One partner. One house. Because one founder had assets and the other didn't, the bank's risk model turned a 50/50 partnership into a lopsided bet on personal net worth.
It wasn't just about the house. It was about what it represented. These two had built the company on equal terms — equal hours, equal risk, equal reward. Making one partner mortgage his family's future to fund the other's growth didn't feel like partnership. It felt like breaking it.
They refused.
That's when they found Lock Finance — or more accurately, when Lock found what the banks couldn't see. Instead of asking "how long has this business existed?" Lock asked "what's actually working here?"
Confirmed orders. Reliable customers. Strong receivables. A business that was fundamentally sound, just structurally constrained by payment timing.
Lock built a facility around the assets the business already had: stock, debtors, and purchase orders. The funding moved with their sales cycle. When orders surged during planting season, capital was there. When demand eased, repayments scaled back. No personal guarantees. No houses on the line. Just business funding business.
Suddenly, the founders could do what they'd always wanted to do: focus on growth. They negotiated better terms with suppliers because they had cash flow certainty. They expanded their product range because they weren't constantly firefighting the next payment deadline. They smoothed out the seasonal spikes that had once dominated every planning conversation.
Invoice finance didn't just unlock capital. It unlocked strategic thinking. With the cash flow timing problem solved, they could make decisions like a mature, scalable operation — not a startup holding its breath between invoices.
Today, they're not just profitable. They're positioned for the kind of expansion that would've been impossible under a traditional bank facility. The partnership is still equal. The risk is still shared. And their personal assets stayed exactly where they belong — out of the equation.
Because grit gets you to the starting line. Smart financing gets you across it.
