Run a 20% off online sale — bigger D2C demand, thinner margin
Warehouse & sales
Real 2026 rebrand costings, prices ex GST (inc-GST shown in grey). ★ = best seller. Use − / + to build this month's PO in 1000-bottle steps — pay 70% on order, 30% at bottling. Sea ~150 days, bottling ~60 days. 3-yr shelf life from purchase — distributors only buy 12+ mo dated stock, direct shops 6+ mo, retail 3+ mo. Goal: repay the owners' $400k loan and pay them $150k in salary within 5 years.
This month's order—
Rebrand ✨
Byron Bay Love Oils → Love Organics. A one-time relaunch lifts every price +40% to the new positioning. Demand dips short-term as customers adjust, but margin jumps. Costs $40,000 in rebrand content — new product photography, brand films, launch creative and campaign ads.
Sales channels
Wholesale runs ~70% of volume today; online ads grow the retail share. We pay all wholesale shipping, but it goes in bulk so it's cheap per bottle.
■ Retail D2C■ Wholesale shops■ Distributors
Distributor share of trade80%
Distributors reach ~1.5× more doors but buy below wholesale: 80% of their volume at 25% off, 10% at 20% off, 10% at 15% off (blended ~76.5% of WS)
Trade ads (magazines)$0
A few $k a year keeps shop accounts growing — slow but sticky
On the water 🚢
Shipments in transit from origin → Sydney facility (~150 days by sea)
Bottling plant 🏭
Landed bulk oil must be booked into the TGA facility — bottling takes ~60 days (2 months) and the 30% balance is due at booking
Promotion calendar
Key retail moments — order stock ~7 months before the big ones
Monthly online ad budget
Ads lift BOTH channels — direct D2C sales plus a brand halo onto wholesale. With no ads the whole business drops to ~$10k retail + $10k wholesale a month. Last year ran on $2k Google + $2k Facebook.
👩💻 Marketing hire (salary)none
Better creative, testing & optimisation lift ROAS on ALL paid channels — senior talent costs more but diminishing returns apply
Total online marketing$0 / mo
SEO & content
Product descriptions, blogs, backlinks. Compounds into free organic D2C sales every month.
Monthly investment$0
Authority — 0 pts
Profit First buckets 🪣
Profit First: every month, revenue is allocated FIRST into buckets — so profit, tax and stock money are set aside before you can spend on OpEx. GST is auto-reserved at 10% of sales. Adjust the rest below (must total 100%).
Spendable (OpEx + buckets released)
Investor 🤝
Raise growth capital by selling equity. An investor pays a premium on the current business valuation, but dilutes Pete & Tim's ownership permanently. Cash hits the bank immediately — useful for funding stock or the rebrand without debt.
Current ownershipPete 68% · Tim 32%
Equity to sell10%
Investment raised—
Owner salary 👑
The owners currently pay themselves nothing. The whole point of the business: pay the owners a real salary AND clear their $400k loan. Win: $150,000 total owner pay + loan fully repaid.
OwnershipPete 68% · Tim 32%
Paid to owners so far$0
Monthly owner salary$0
Pay it only when the business can afford it — but the clock is ticking
Bank loan facility 🏦
The owners lent the business $400,000 interest-free — repayment pace is up to you. Separately, borrow up to $150,000 at 10% p.a. — interest charged monthly on the outstanding balance. At this volume a Black Seed reorder alone can run $40k+ — the facility exists because stock is bought 7 months before it sells.
Owners' loan (interest-free)$400,000
Monthly repayment to owners$0
It's a personal loan from the owners — repay at whatever pace cash flow allows
Bank facility outstanding$0
Facility interest next month$0
Monthly profit
Operating profit per month (rounded to $k)
Channel dashboard
This month's result — ■ Retail D2C vs ■ Wholesale (shops + distributors), with change vs last month.
Run a month to populate the dashboard.
Business valuation 💼
Australian SME best practice: Seller's Discretionary Earnings (SDE) method. SDE = operating profit + the owners' addback (salary + their loan repayments, since a buyer wouldn't carry the founders' personal loan). A base e-commerce multiple of ~3× is adjusted for the value drivers buyers reward, then we add net stock and cash and subtract bank debt.
Trade for a few months to build a 12-month earnings history, then a valuation will appear.
Trading log
Fixed overheads $10,000/mo (wages, rent, agency, software) + real scaling costs per bottle sold — Retail: 3PL $3.81, storage $0.03, post subsidy $0.51, banking $0.98 (= $5.33/btl). Shops & distributors: 3PL $0.70, storage $0.03, shipping we pay $1.31, banking $0.01 (= $2.05/btl).
Calibrated to last year's real volumes (~31,000 btl/yr, achieved on $2k Google + $2k Facebook — with no ads income falls to ~$10k+$10k/mo). You start with $10k cash, ~12 months of stock on hand, nothing on the water, ads OFF, and 80% of trade via distributors. Five years on the clock. Tune the levers and run your first month.
Result
AI Strategy Tester 🤖
The AI plays the exact same game engine you do — headlessly, with no clicking — thousands of times to find what maximises business valuation after 60 months. Results use seeded randomness so they're repeatable, but will shift as you change sim counts because each game rolls different market luck.
Pick a run size. 100 and 1,000 are quick; 10,000 takes a few seconds and runs in batches so the page stays responsive.
Strategy Results 📊
Run the AI tester first — results appear here.
Yearly Business Reports 📅
Your human game's year-by-year story (updates as you pass each December). The AI's best run is shown too after you run a test.
How it works ❓
Playing manually. On the Play tab, set your levers each month — stock orders, ad spend, prices, channel mix, loan repayment, owner salary — then tap Run month. You're steering BBLO across 5 years (60 months), trying to clear the owners' $400k loan, pay $150k in salary, and build the biggest business valuation without running out of cash.
The 5 phases.
Year 1 — Survival: test pricing, find demand, guard cash.
Year 2 — Growth: build brand, raise stock, hire carefully, grow repeat customers.
Year 3 — Expansion: wholesale opportunities, rising ad costs, more competition.
Year 5 — Maturity: stabilise, maximise valuation, profit, brand and satisfaction.
Running AI simulations. On the AI Tester tab, choose 100 / 1,000 / 10,000. Each strategy plays full 60-month games on the same engine and the averages land in the Results tab. Monte Carlo looks ahead each month (slower); Evolve breeds and mutates settings over generations to discover a tuned policy.
Reading the results.Avg score is valuation minus penalties (bankruptcy, stockouts, loss months, low satisfaction, excess debt). Win rate = finished solvent with the owners' loan cleared. Bankruptcy rate shows how often the strategy ran out of cash. Compare avg valuation, profit and risk to see the trade-offs.
Why results move. Every month adds seeded market randomness — viral TikToks, port delays, COGS creep, algorithm dips. More simulations average that luck out, so a 10,000-run result is a steadier read on a strategy's true quality than 100.