Chain
reactions
3 minute read
Making even simple products involves
intricate financial choreography.
We reveal the payment flows that
take a running shoe from components
to customer.
Supply chains manage flows of
goods—but they also manage the
flows of cash that make global
commerce possible. When a
parcel arrives on your doorstep,
it represents the culmination
of a series of complex financial
interactions that began months earlier.
Consider a single product, like a running shoe: It
might contain inputs and processes that span a wide
range of countries. Rubber from Indonesia, foam
from China, eyelets from Vietnam. And payments
must be carefully coordinated between all parties—
often across different currencies, regulatory regimes
and banking systems—to keep production moving.
The challenge, however, is timing. Component
manufacturers need funding to produce parts.
Assembly facilities must pay for production runs.
Logistics companies need capital to ferry the finished
goods around the world. In all cases, outgoings
precede revenue, meaning that monitoring cash flow
is crucial. To avoid operations stalling, businesses
need to preempt deficits and get finance at the
right time. Global events, however, can make this
easier said than done.
Using data from Slope, a B2B payments platform
for enterprise companies, we visualized the 2024
financial stories of four anonymized businesses,
each reflecting a typical player in the global
running shoe supply chain.
The monthly revenue from the downstream company,
minus the cost of buying from the upstream company
The cumulative monthly revenue from the downstream
company, minus the cumulative monthly costs of
buying from the upstream company
The ideal time for each entity to finance,
as recommended by Slope
SCROLL TO SEE MORE
SOURCES: WWW.JPMORGAN.COM/PAYMENTS-UNBOUND/SOURCES
INFOGRPAHIC: SETRESET
