Gibraltar Business Capital provided Texas-based Easy Gardener Products a $20 million credit facility to help with a restructuring.
Easy Gardener designs, manufactures and sells consumer lawn and garden products. It sells its products under patented and trademarked brands such as WeedBlock, Jobe’s, Emerald Edge, Landmaster, Ross and Jobe’s Organics. Its customer base includes national home improvement and mass merchant retailers as well as local hardware stores and independent garden centers and nurseries.
Easy Gardener is owned by Centre Lane Partners, a New York-based private investment firm that invests in underperforming companies with revenues generally between $20 million and $500 million. When the company needed access to capital from the less restrictive non-bank environment, Gibraltar was approached to help with an asset-based financing solution.
“One of the reasons we’ve chosen Gibraltar as a financing partner is the accessibility of the credit committee,” Kenneth Lau, managing partner and co-founder of Centre Lane Partners, said. “During the financing process, we’ve been able to discuss our concerns directly with all members of the credit committee. They spent significant time and resources to fully understand the company’s financial and operational restructuring.”
In this transaction, Gibraltar had to generate more liquidity through an approach to the use of the company’s collateral. It is typical for an asset-based borrowing base formula to include accounts receivable and inventory. In this case, A/R was expanded to include Canadian A/R and special dating A/R, in which special credit terms are offered to retailers to encourage them to order and accept delivery of seasonal items well ahead of the peak sales period. To provide enough structural flexibility to meet the needs of this very seasonal business, Gibraltar offered higher advances against inventory for both high and low season, plus advances against excess and in-transit inventory, and inventory located in Canada.
Gibraltar Business Capital offers asset-based lending credit facilities between $2 million and $20 million to mid-market businesses.
