$13m Revenue. Crippling Debt. Chance to turn it all around. What would you do?

Came up with a product idea over beers in 2015 while working as a chef in Australia. Got a friend on board and we put in about $5k each to start, we weren't afraid of hard work and had some industry contacts that helped (product = mini beer keg).

3 years later we were doing $1m in revenue from our shopify store, doing everything ourselves. Website and product design, customer service, book keeping, pick and pack, social media, photography, seo, advertising, import and logistics…

Got some big clients on board (not sure how, one thing we definitely aren't is salesmen) including Heineken, Bacardi, Stone Brewing. Had a great couple of years, tried hiring some "experts" to take over various positions but got screwed each time so never escaped working in the business instead of on it despite a head full of ideas.

Mate moved to Germany so we opened a branch there and then we were both doing $1m a year in sales but margins were closing, a single google ad that had been getting 1200% roas for 4 years was "upgraded" to pmax and promptly shat itself causing a massive drop in sales.

Covid was chaos, lock downs would triple demand as everyone wanted a bar at home, but factories and logistics were a nightmare. We made it through but it was tight.

Finances were stretched but early 2023 we doubled down and spent to design a new tap system for the kegs. It is genuinely awesome and unique, plus an upgrade for our thousands of existing customers, so we sank money into ads and collecting contacts for a kickstarter launch and ended up hitting 1000% target ($250k of presales in 3 week campaign).

Shipment arrived and started fulfilling only to find that a generic component had been sourced from our competitors factory and by "random coincidence" was faulty. All products needed to be unpacked, parts replaced, repacked. Ones already shipped had to be replaced. Massive momentum created from the launch was lost dealing with a mess of logistics, entire operation was unprofitable but we had a new and unique product and clawed our way back.

Meanwhile I was getting slammed with tax bills that were $20-40k more than expected each quarter and having to take out short term loans to pay them. When I finally started checking my accountants work (a CPA who was recommended by the ecommerce shared warehouse we had moved to) within an hour I found $20k of import tax getting reconciled as freight… within 5 hours I was at $50k, then noticed a recent google ads bill hadn't had tax separated off it… from there it all fell apart. Our available cash had always been low but it turned out I'd overpaid over a hundred thousand dollars in tax, it took me 3 months of going through my xero accounts line by line and pointing out idiot mistakes to the accountant who would make alterations to claim against future tax bills. Then I found his bookkeeper making exactly the same error the very next line after a manual journal entry to fix the previous one. I locked them out of my accounts and spent the next few months finding a new accounting firm, this one recommended by xero and paying them to redo the entire last 2 years books.

Obviously the business suffered while I was trying to sort this out for 5 months, but in the middle of that period I had an idea and made a product video that went viral, a product that I had previously been trying to give away went mental and I turned it into an ad and sold a couple of hundred thousand $ of them at the start of this year. This caused absolute chaos and stress trying to ramp up production and fly in stock to keep up (fairly large stainless steel items from china) but I figured if I flew in some and sent others by sea I'd maintain momentum with non profitable sales till sea stock arrived and I could cash in.

My fiancee and I finally booked our wedding that we'd been putting it off due to tight finances and stress. The sea shipment arrived the day we were flying to Europe for it (she is German) but I noticed Meta was going to try and charge a card that was nearly maxxed (payment due to clear 2 days later) so I decided to manually pay the ads invoice upfront with a different card before they charged the maxxed one. My credit card company blocked the transaction and Meta immediately shut our entire account in the time it took me to respond YES to the text message asking if I recognised the transaction. The account was active again 12 hours later but the ad died and I was enroute to my wedding.

We had our wedding, as sales slumped from 200% up YoY to under. Then my best friend and business partner received a big C diagnosis. Then we found our manufacturer breaching our exclusive distribution agreement for the product we designed and lawyers told us the contract wouldn't hold up in Chinese court.

We've been working with them for 9 years and they've sent us a load of stock on credit terms, which sales slowed dramatically on, potentially due to them selling to competitors or potential customers.

They've agreed they'll sign any contract we get drawn up to continue working together but we're exhausted. We're in debt by about $350k but could sell off the stock we've got on hand, use it to pay personally liable debts and possibly walk away with a bankrupt company and nothing to show for 8 years hard work building a well known and respected brand that did $13m in revenue.

The only other option we see is external cash from investors, selling franchises or selling off the EU side of the business. All of these are possible and we've had a bunch of interest but will take time that isn't on our side. We are in negotiations with parties who want franchises for the UK, USA and Japan. We've been given a price guide by Flippa that would cover all debts and a substantial amount on top for just the Europe side, leaving us an intact company and business.

But we need to buy stock now for Christmas to survive, to do that we need to pay the credit contracts with suppliers. To do that we'd need to take out personally liable loans and removes the current option we have to walk away from it all and puts us further in personally liable debt territory, which would mean personal bankruptcy if it doesn't work out in the near future.

Id be personally bankrupt a month or 2 after getting married, my best mate would also be bankrupt with a 3 year old son and no idea where his health will be in 6 months. He wants out, he's exhausted and the stress might literally kill him so I'd be going it alone for the chance to turn it around before the full time bell…

So entrepreneurs of reddit, what would you do? I'm open to just about any ideas at the moment.