No, I'm not. I'm not assuming anything. Here is what they wrote:
"In April 2022, a representative from this distributor reached out to us to see if we would be interested in participating in an online specialty coffee program for a major nationwide retailer. The opening order would be approximately 6,000 “units”."
At this point there are only two possibilities.
1. They asked how much they were going to be paid for these 6000 "units" and on what terms.
2. They didn't.
If they asked, the answer should have immediately clued them in that they were making a false assumption that a unit was a bag. And if they didn't, well, that's still on them.
No, I'm saying they should have asked.
> They thought they had a deal to sell 6000 "units" for $250,000.
Now you're agreeing that they didn't necessarily have that deal up front, and that they should have asked for it.
"TLDR: We got grifted by a multi-billion dollar distributor for $250,000."
That is a lie.
What actually happened is that a broker came to them with an offer which they accepted despite not achieving clarity on exactly what the offer actually was. They thought they were signing up for 6000 bags when in fact they were signing up for six times as many because they did not understand a term of art in their industry. This was their first mistake. Then, when they realized their mistake, they decided to proceed and invest the necessary capital to meet the order without fully assessing the potential risks. That was their second mistake. They could have pulled the plug then, but they chose not to.
Then it all fell through. That's tough, I feel sorry for them, but they are not the victims here. Deals falling through is a Thing That Happens in business. That's why there are contracts and insurance, and why finance and risk management is a thing. At every step in the process, their situation was 100% their fault. No one lied to them. No one put a gun to their head and forced them to do something they didn't want to do. No one did anything that was not part of standard business practice. The situation is entirely the result of their naivete, failure to do their due diligence, failure to properly assess risks, and unbelievably poor decision making in the face of newly discovered information.
And now they are digging themselves in even deeper by accusing their distributor of grifting them. No, sorry, they were not grifted. They were just stupid, and rather than admit it and learn from it, they are trying to shift the blame to their distributor and make this sound like a David-v-Goliath story. It isn't. It's a company-being-stupid-failing-to-own-up-to-it story.
And under no conceivable scenario are the justified in accusing the distributor of being a bad actor.
Yes, it would, if the price was quoted per bag rather than per unit/case. That seems unlikely, but it's possible, and it would make the initial confusion slightly more understandable.
This smells like a slimy growth hacking strategy.
From the article, they said they knew that $250k was coming so it would be worth it.
This is a major error on their part, to think they had really found somebody willing to pay $41/bag.
All that effort to get them over the hump and they're basically making $10hr at best. Future orders like this wouldn't be sustainable because you can't pay labor that little. They seem like a lifestyle business that got in over their head.