First Acquisition - Part 2

Good morning, hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! The last post (regarding the acquisition and lead up) went over pretty well so I thought I'd break it into parts and see if I can't crowd fund some help by leveraging the expertise of the collective to see where it goes! I acquired Walden Backyards in late September (just by way of a reminder). It took me the first month to get all of the accounts/email switched over fully as well as to get a handle on the products, workflows that had previously existed (minimal), and building out a Google Drive file structure so I could begin to organize all the documents I had collected from the seller (and from vendors, etc.) - none of it sounds like a big deal, but they were the nearest rocks at the time. In addition, we've really focused on optimizing ads, identifying new products we could bring in, and a long list of other tasks (vetting 3PL partners, finding new prospective vendors, etc.). This all coincided with Q4 beginning so sales continue to increase in volume and velocity. Thankfully the seller had a decent amount of inventory (in the higher velocity items but many SKUs are out of stock) of which, I have a consignment agreement with the seller. Revenue doubled from September to October at >70% gross margin. It's a lean business model as I use a 3PL to warehouse and ship all of my items (as well as FBA by Amazon) - no employees, no real estate (leased or owned), etc. So here's where I'm at: 1) I'm in spot where some growth capital would be helpful to completely restock all of the SKUs (sans some slow movers) while also adding some newly developed products. Who do I reach out to? Who could help us grow? I am too new to talk to banks and love the thought of having investor(s) that could help connect dots, make intros, etc. - basically capital providers that can bring some additional things to the table (beyond capital). One of the legacy vendors has a container load of one SKU (>12,000 of one SKU) sitting in China waiting for the go ahead to pick up. I've negotiated beneficial terms but will miss Q4 so this would be a 'get ready for spring' play as it's a more lawn and garden item. 2) All of Walden's products are super heavy duty and I am discovering now that they're way over-built (one of our grates is >80lbs - nightmare to move, nightmare to ship!) and were designed 100% for quality/longevity (which is obviously a good thing!) not for manufacturability nor designed with packaging/shipping in mind at all. While I certainly want to be known as a quality product manufacturer, I think reducing the product mass 20%+/- wouldn't negatively affect product quality/customer experience but would greatly reduce cost to manufacture and ship and improve usability overall. I am also looking at the business viability of bringing in some smaller commercially available products that would help offset the heavy/large volume costly products that we currently have in Amazon and at our 3PL and could be higher velocity (likely smaller margin) items and could be used as a 'gateway' to our higher ticket SKUs (firepit sets, etc.). In addition to these factors, I am also working with a few U.S. based manufacturers to help have some products made here - to help de-risk the dependence on foreign manufacturers by onshoring some of the manufacturing. This would change the business a bit as the minimum order quantities and lead times would be reduced and would also help us be less susceptible to tariffs/unknown (though obviously a lot of the raw materials our local manufacturers use still come from foreign countries so we wouldn't completely escape it). 3) A similar deal to what I negotiated with Walden has 'fallen in my lap' - a small company with quality products and an operator/owner who wants to retire. I've been up front with this prospective seller on the basics of my Walden deal so I was transparent on what I'd be looking for and he welcomed furthering the conversation. The numbers are very similar to Walden but with a bit of a different focus/target market. That said, ecommerce is certainly the play with it and could be added to Walden fairly easily from an operations/sales/marketing standpoint. Being 2 months into my first deal, this isn't something I was seeking but if anything was taken from my last post, I've shown myself to be someone who follows opportunities. If it could be had with a similar structure to Walden, I think it'd help make this one possible. My question for the group is, where would you focus? What am I missing (where are my blinders?)? Pick it apart - I'm a small business owner, I don't have pride left! Obviously the reality is that I'll be pushing forward with each of these items (and more!) but for sake of a post that gets some engagement I am acting like I need to focus exclusively on one of the 3 above.