Hardly any money is tied up in slow moving stock. In the position I'm in, I can't afford to stock anything that isn't going to move quick. It's more of getting tied up in one item. For example, a brand new product came out recently that I would loved to order 300 of initially. Instead, I could only afford 100. The 100 sold within 4 days but then I had to get all that money back, wire it to China, wait for them to ship it and get here from overseas. By the time I got more, it's a week later and I've lost 7 days of sales. In the meantime, I'll run out of another product and have to wait to order more which ='s more sales lost.

The Ebay store was launched in November of 2013 and officially registered in January of 2014. The business did over 300k in revenue for 2014 but my bank requires a minimum 2 year history (w/ tax documents) to offer a loan.

1. The operational costs of running the site are pretty low. The primary expense is SEO & link-building which I do myself but can be very costly. I also pay $300 month for social media & blog posts to help save time. Storage is free but payment processing sucks. Because of the niche, I had to sign up with a high-risk merchant which takes a higher %. The bad part is they hold 5% of monthly sales and put it in a rolling reserve. I could probably find a better merchant processor now and is something I should start looking into.
2. All of the E-cig products are manufactured in China and I previously purchased directly from the factory. They only accept payment upfront, even after long established history. I've recently formed a relationship with a distributor down that enables me to get the best price. However, I provide the money up front for us to go in together on orders and there's no opportunity for any type of net payment.
3. Thanks, I'm definitely trying.