Online Paints: four months between paying the factory and being paid

Most of what Online Paints sells is manufactured overseas. Jamie Emms pays the factory before production starts, and waits a third of a year to be paid himself.

Jamie Emms started Online Paints in 1999. In 2008 he launched Boss Fillers, a range built for painters and cladding manufacturers, after spotting a gap nobody was addressing.

“There was difficulty with the products that were available, and no one was filling that gap.”

Six products later, he supplies independent paint shops across New Zealand.

The business is deliberately unhurried, and that is a choice rather than an accident. “I’ve gone slow and steady and I haven’t taken on huge debts.”

Which leaves one problem. Most of what he sells is manufactured overseas, and the money goes out a long time before it comes back.

The gap

Jamie pays his factory before manufacturing starts. Then a month to make it. A month to ship it. A month in storage while it goes out to customers. Then customers pay on the 20th of the following month.

“So it was always a minimum of four months. And when I say minimum, sometimes it’s five months, sometimes it’s six, because there are delays at any step of that process.”

Early in 2026, every step slipped at once. Shipping was disrupted, his factory struggled to get materials, and four months stretched towards seven.

“I had paid money for a product they were taking a long time to make, and then they couldn’t ship it. The sales were there, but the money was so far down the line.”

Then the shipment reached port and the GST fell due.

The bank was not the answer. The business was growing, so he was importing more each month, just as the wider economy tightened.

“I just got caught in the middle.”

Finding Fundtap

He went looking for purchase order finance, money at the start of the cycle rather than the end. At his size, nobody would do it.

What he found instead was funding against invoices he had already issued. Later in the cycle than he had hoped for, but a great deal earlier than the 20th of the following month.

“It was pretty much exactly what I needed, and it was easy.”

He connected MYOB himself.

“I had no difficulty with that at all. I just followed the prompts. There were no dramas, nothing to report.”

His first drawdown went to Customs, clearing the GST on a shipment that would otherwise have sat at the port collecting fines.

What changed

The obvious change is that a four month gap is now survivable. The more interesting one is what it does to how he buys.

“I can place orders at the factory a little more confidently, because I know the money is going to be there a month earlier than I expected. So my stock levels can be a bit lower.”

He also uses it less than he could, which he counts as the point.

He has since pointed another business owner our way, an importer and contractor with the same shape of problem.