Erin Wall recalls what it was like working with young, fast-growing brands as a senior merchant at Target. “A lot of times … they would be going from $1 million to $10 million in revenue with Target alone,” she says. “I’d be like, ‘Wow, this is so exciting!’” But then she’d clock a look of fear in the founder’s eyes.

Growth in the consumer product market can feel unsustainable. Brands may discover a “gap,” or catch-22, in financing: I need money to build inventory, but I need inventory to make money.

“What happens is, a retailer will come to a young brand and be like, ‘Wow, we really want this in our store!’” Wall explains. “And the young brand has to go and basically start building the inventory well ahead of a purchase order. And that’s where we come in.”

Today, Wall is president of Lunr Capital, a Minneapolis-based capital provider that works specifically with brands growing into big-box retail spaces. Lunr’s goal is to fill the gap. Its model is known as inventory commitment financing, where the product serves as collateral. The strategy here is to “transform retailer purchase orders into immediate working capital,” per Lunr. That capital goes toward production, so brands can fulfill retail commitments ahead of payment. And because it’s flexible, non-dilutive financing, the founder doesn’t give up equity.

“Banks don’t understand retail,” Wall says, “and retail is super dynamic. It’s moving constantly. The landscape is changing in terms of what they need, and so that’s a big part of how we built this business.”

Last week, Lunr announced a major milestone: $100 million deployed since 2023. The firm launched in 2021 and has provided financing for brands nationwide and across categories—including food and beverage, beauty, and outdoor products. “I don’t know if it changes anything, necessarily, for us,” Wall says, of the milestone, “but it does show our ability to scale and continue to prove this model works.”

Amid tariffs and funding uncertainty, the Lunr model may offer a more solid trajectory for rising consumer-goods brands.

Take Bim Bam Boo, a Minneapolis-based maker of bamboo-sourced toilet paper. Zoë Levin got the business up and running around 2020. Within about three years, the CEO and founder says, Bim Bam Boo was experiencing scary-exciting growth. She asked an entrepreneur friend for advice, and he pointed her to Lunr.

Levin says she met with Lunr several times, handed over financials—and “they were coaching me through … like, ‘Hey, we really want to work with you, but we need to see A, B, and C.’”

It took about a year a half, she says, before Bim Bam Boo’s metrics were right for Lunr. “I made my first million, maybe million and a half or so, before I was able to land a deal with them, and they took us to a little over $3 million.” The brand had also been picked up by Target nationally.

She says an entity like Lunr is rare to find locally, and is suited to retail growth. “You really don’t want to use investor capital for inventory if you don’t have to—you’ve got to use it for growth funds,” she says. What about a bank loan? “You have to meet a very specific profile for a bank. They are very risk averse, and you’ll likely have to secure it with a personal guarantee.” In some of those cases, she says, an early-stage founder’s only option is to put her home on the line.

Inventory financing can target the “pain point,” she continues, “which is, ‘I need to have inventory to make money’”—but the ideal is to tap a mix. “At the end of the day, I think everyone is using a blend [of financing].”

Wall says President Trump’s tariffs have boosted Lunr’s profile. “Doing business with retail is always expensive,” she notes, “but even more so under the current tariff environment.” Levin points to the tariff ripple effect: As costs rise for Target and Walmart, so for their brands. “Having a flexible funding partner that’s understanding and can work with you through that is incredibly important,” she says. Holding cash, for retail sales and partnerships, becomes critical, Wall adds.

Today’s funding scene presents another favorable case for inventory financing, with The New York Times last month reporting on the Trump administration’s staff cuts to the Small Business Administration (SBA), which provides loans and advice to small businesses, plus its scaling back of Biden-era policies intended to free up credit to “the smallest enterprises.”

“It used to be, you get your SBA loan, and you find some other funding opportunities—whether that’s factoring, or purchase-order financing,” Levin says. “Those private debt markets become more important as this administration restricts the fundability of the SBA.”

She continues, “When we think of the unicorns that came out of the Twin Cities market or the Minnesota market, they were utilizing these types of funding mechanisms to support their growth. That’s not really on the table as a viable option within the short term anymore.”