YETI +14, Crocs +7, FIGS -31: Who Won the DPO Game in the Rate Cycle

I look at working capital benchmarks for ecommerce brands the same way a doctor looks at blood pressure. Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) is one of the three vitals along with inventory days and Days Sales Outstanding, and it is the one operators ignore the most. Across the 14 public DTC brands we tracked through the 2022 to 2026 rate cycle, the cohort split in two. Strong brands like YETI and Crocs stretched suppliers and turned hard-rate pressure into a working capital tailwind. Weak brands like FIGS lost supplier leverage and got squeezed in the opposite direction. The lesson for your $1M to $150M brand: this is a fight worth having before your suppliers decide which bucket you are in.

This is a 14-peer public benchmark sourced from SEC EDGAR 10-K filings: Lululemon, Revolve, Stitch Fix, FIGS, Warby Parker, YETI, Crocs, The Honest Company, Vita Coco, Purple Innovation, Allbirds, Beyond Meat, Beachbody, and Etsy. Combined annual COGS: $12.5B. DPO range at most recent fiscal year-end: 12.2 days (Etsy, a marketplace with almost no physical COGS) to 75.5 days (YETI, with two and a half months of supplier float). For rate context I pulled the Federal Funds Rate and SOFR from FRED. Federal Funds Rate is the rate the Fed sets that ripples into every business loan; SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate) is the benchmark most revolvers price off.

Most operators I talk to think DPO is a finance department metric. It is not. It is a 20% to 40% chunk of your working capital that you control through how you negotiate, communicate, and pay suppliers. The brands that fought for those days in 2022 to 2026 freed real cash. The brands that ignored it got their terms shortened by suppliers worried about their solvency.

What DPO is, and why it suddenly mattered in 2022

Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) is how many days, on average, your business takes to pay suppliers after receiving an invoice. The formula is accounts payable divided by cost of goods sold, multiplied by 365. If you have $1M in AP and $12M in annual COGS, your DPO is 30.4 days. Higher DPO means you hold supplier cash longer and free up your own working capital. Lower DPO means the opposite.

Before 2022, DPO was a quiet metric. Cash was cheap (Fed Funds at 0.08% in January 2022), borrowing was cheap, and a 30-day swing in payables was worth almost nothing in interest terms. Then the Fed started hiking. By August 2023 the Fed Funds Rate was at 5.33%, and a typical SOFR-plus-450-basis-points revolver for a mid-market DTC brand was costing 9 to 10%. Suddenly every day of working capital had a real interest cost. For a $50M brand with $25M in COGS, every 10 extra days of DPO frees about $685,000 of cash. At a 9% borrowing rate, that is worth about $62,000 a year in avoided interest. Across the rate cycle, the brands that fought for 20 extra days saved $120K per year, every year.

The median public DTC cohort actually shrunk DPO over the rate cycle

Here is the headline finding, and it surprised us when we ran the numbers. Median DPO across the 14-peer cohort fell from 38.6 days at fiscal year-end 2022 to 32.6 days at FY2023, then partially recovered to 35.5 days at FY2024. The "everyone extended DPO during the rate cycle" narrative is wrong. Half the cohort extended; half got shortened.

The reason the median fell: the wounded brands lost supplier leverage faster than the strong brands gained it. When a supplier sees your cash position weakening (revenue declining, gross margin compressing, public guidance cuts), they tighten payment terms because they are pricing in the risk of you going under. The strong brands, meanwhile, had to actively negotiate longer terms, and that is a slower, harder process than a supplier unilaterally shortening yours.

Who stretched the most (and how)

Five brands in the cohort meaningfully extended DPO. Three did it from a position of strength. Two did it as a survival move.

YETI: 61.8 to 75.5 days (+13.7), $28.7M unlocked

YETI is the textbook extension story. They went from 61.8 days at fiscal year-end 2022 to a peak of 97.1 days at FY2023 before pulling back to 75.5 days at FY2024. The peak in FY2023 lines up with their inventory glut and the period where they were holding $337M of inventory on $716M COGS. YETI extended payables partly to fund the inventory build and partly because suppliers wanted to keep YETI's reorder cadence and were willing to wait. By FY2024 the relationship normalized at 75.5 days, still 13.7 days higher than where they started. That is roughly $28.7M of working capital they freed permanently.

Crocs: 49.7 to 57.1 days (+7.4), $34.5M unlocked

Crocs played a more deliberate version of the same game. DPO crept from 49.7 days at FY2022 to 54.4 at FY2023 to 57.1 at FY2024. On $1.69B of COGS, that 7.4-day extension is worth $34.5M of working capital. Crocs has a structural advantage here: they are the biggest customer to most of their contract manufacturers, and they have brand pull that makes them a "must keep" account. When you are the most important customer in a supplier's order book, you can negotiate terms others cannot. That is the lever you want to be building toward at $20M to $50M revenue.

Vita Coco: 17.9 to 35.4 days (+17.5), $15.2M unlocked

Vita Coco's jump from 17.9 to 35.4 days is the largest percentage move in the cohort. They essentially went from paying suppliers in 18 days (faster than terms required, almost certainly to capture early-pay discounts when cash was cheap and ad spend payback was fast) to paying in 35 days (closer to standard net-30 terms). This is what happens when a company stops over-paying for early discounts and starts holding cash at the new market rate. Worth noting they also grew revenue 43% in the same window, so part of this is operational scale.

Lululemon: 17.4 to 25.1 days (+7.7), $101M unlocked

Lululemon's absolute DPO numbers are low because they pay quickly (a brand-strength choice and partly because owned-store inventory turns fast). But on $4.82B of COGS, even a 7.7-day extension is $101M of working capital. Lululemon proves that the working capital math compounds with scale, not with absolute DPO days. A 7-day extension on a $5B COGS base unlocks more cash than a 30-day extension on a $300M base.

Allbirds: 26.6 to 36.2 days (+9.6), the survival extension

Allbirds extended DPO by 9.6 days, but this is not a strength move. Revenue collapsed from $298M to $152M between FY2022 and FY2025 and the company has been burning cash. The DPO extension here is almost certainly a function of slower payment cycles forced by cash constraint, not negotiated supplier flexibility. This is what DPO extension looks like in a wounded brand: it goes up because cash is tight, not because you have negotiating power. The metric improves but the underlying business is weakening.

FIGS lost 31 days. Here is what that means

FIGS is the cohort's clearest cautionary tale. DPO collapsed from 50.4 days at FY2022 to 19.1 days at FY2024. Accounts payable dropped from $20.9M to $9.4M even as cost of goods sold grew from $151M to $180M. This is the financial signature of suppliers tightening terms in response to perceived risk. When a supplier sees a brand's growth slow, gross margin compress, and stock price drop 70%, they call their credit team and shorten terms. FIGS did not choose to pay in 19 days; their suppliers stopped extending 50-day terms.

The other shorteners (Revolve -5.7, Honest Company -5.2, Warby Parker -4.6, Stitch Fix -3.8) all share a pattern: revenue stagnation or decline, gross margin pressure, and visible balance sheet stress. Suppliers act like banks. The minute they think you might not pay, they pull credit. Your job as an operator is to be in the bucket that gets extended terms, not the one that gets shortened.

The squeeze that forced the play

To understand why DPO became a fight worth having in 2022, look at what happened to the cost of borrowing. From January 2022 to August 2023 the Federal Funds Rate climbed from 0.08% to 5.33%, the fastest hiking cycle since 1981. SOFR, the benchmark most working capital revolvers price off, moved almost exactly in lockstep.

For a mid-market DTC brand with a SOFR-plus-450 revolver, the all-in borrowing cost went from about 4.5% in early 2022 to about 9.8% by mid-2023 and stayed there for over a year. That meant every $1M of working capital you had to borrow cost an extra $53,000 per year in interest, every year. For a $50M brand running $5M to $10M of revolver draw most of the time, that is $250K to $500K of pure interest expense added to the P&L. The brands that found a way to fund working capital with supplier credit instead of bank credit avoided that drag entirely. We covered the borrowing side of this story in our 14-peer effective borrowing cost benchmark.

The math: $179M of free working capital across 4 peers

Working capital unlocked equals (DPO change divided by 365) multiplied by annual COGS. Here is the math on the 4 strong-position extenders (excluding Allbirds since their extension was a survival side effect, not a strength play):

DPO calculated as (accounts payable / cost of goods sold) x 365 using SEC 10-K filings via EDGAR. FY assignment uses each company's reporting calendar. Allbirds excluded from this table because their +9.6 day extension reflects cash constraint, not negotiated supplier flexibility.

That $179M is real cash, not an accounting trick. It is cash these brands can use to buy inventory ahead of season, fund ad spend, skip revolver draws, or hold as a buffer. At a 9% borrowing cost, that $179M is worth about $16M of annual interest expense avoided across just these 4 companies.

Why this matters for your business

If you are running a $1M to $150M DTC brand, the DPO question is not "should I extend payables." The question is "what bucket will my suppliers put me in next quarter." You are either a brand suppliers want to keep happy (in which case you have leverage to negotiate longer terms), or you are a brand suppliers worry about (in which case they are going to tighten your terms whether you like it or not). Most brands sit somewhere in the middle and have not yet had the conversation that puts them firmly in the first bucket.

Three levers to extend DPO without breaking supplier relationships

This is the playbook we use with portfolio brands. None of these levers require playing games or stretching beyond agreed terms.

Lever 1: Volume-for-terms negotiation. Most suppliers will give net-60 instead of net-30 if you commit to 12 months of forecast volume. The deal is simple: you guarantee a minimum order quantity (with deposit or take-or-pay structure), they give you 30 extra days of float. This works best with contract manufacturers who care about utilization. Bring your forecast, a 6-month track record of paying on time, and a specific ask. Do not just say "I want longer terms."

Lever 2: Supply chain finance (SCF) program. Your bank pays the supplier in 15 days at a small discount (typically 1 to 2%). You pay the bank in 90 days at a small interest cost (typically SOFR plus 200-300 bps). The supplier gets paid faster than your standard terms. You hold cash 60 days longer. The bank takes a small margin for being the middleman. SCF is the most underused working capital tool in mid-market DTC. Most banks will set one up for brands above $20M revenue. Talk to your relationship banker.

Lever 3: Be disciplined about early-pay discounts. A 2/10 net 30 discount (2% off if you pay in 10 days instead of 30) is an effective annual rate of 36.7%. At 8% borrowing cost, you should always take it. At 12% borrowing cost, you should take it even harder. But if you do not have the cash and the alternative is a revolver draw at 10%, the discount math still works in favor of taking it. Many brands skip early-pay discounts to "extend DPO" when the discount rate exceeds their borrowing cost. That is leaving free money on the table. Run the math every quarter.

When extending DPO backfires

Three failure modes I see repeatedly. First: stretching a supplier who has alternatives. If you are not in the top 10 customers for your contract manufacturer, you are expendable. Stretch terms and you move to the back of the queue during the next shortage. Second: stretching without communication. The worst thing is a supplier finding out you are paying slow by missing payroll on their end. Always tell them in advance, never let them discover. Third: using DPO extension to mask a real cash problem. If you cannot pay net-30 because the unit economics are broken, pushing to net-60 just delays the reckoning. Fix the unit economics first.

The conversation to have with your top 5 suppliers this month

Pull your AP report. Sort suppliers by annual spend, descending. The top 5 probably account for 60% of your AP volume. Schedule a 30-minute call with each one and run this conversation: "We are reviewing all our supplier terms as part of our annual planning. Our current terms with you are X. Here is our committed volume for the next 12 months. We want to talk about extending terms to Y in exchange for that volume commitment." Most suppliers will negotiate. Some will say no. The brands that have this conversation every year end up with structurally longer payment terms than the brands that never ask.

Frequently Asked Questions

what is days payable outstanding and why does it matter for ecommerce brands?

Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) is how many days, on average, your business takes to pay suppliers after receiving an invoice. The formula is accounts payable divided by cost of goods sold, multiplied by 365. Higher DPO means you hold supplier cash longer and free up your own working capital. For a $50M brand with $25M in COGS, every 10 extra days of DPO frees about $685,000 of cash you can use to buy inventory, fund ads, or skip a credit line draw. In the 2022-2026 rate cycle, that cash was worth 8-12% in avoided interest, which is why the strong brands fought hard to extend it.

which public DTC brands extended DPO the most in the 2022-2026 rate cycle?

Across our 14-peer public DTC cohort, four brands meaningfully extended DPO from fiscal year-end 2022 to most recent: Vita Coco added 17.5 days (from 17.9 to 35.4), YETI added 13.7 days (61.8 to 75.5), Allbirds added 9.6 days (26.6 to 36.2, though as a survival move not a strength play), and both Lululemon and Crocs added about 7 days. These are the brands with the scale and brand pull to make suppliers wait. Most of the cohort actually saw DPO shrink as their cash positions weakened and suppliers tightened terms in response.

which brands lost supplier leverage during the rate cycle?

FIGS is the clearest case: DPO fell 31 days from FY2022 to FY2024, from 50.4 days to 19.1 days. Their accounts payable dropped from $20.9M to $9.4M even as cost of goods sold climbed from $151M to $180M. That is the textbook signature of a brand that lost negotiating power with suppliers, likely because suppliers demanded faster payment terms once growth slowed. Revolve, Honest Company, Warby Parker, and Stitch Fix all shortened DPO by 4 to 6 days in the same window. Suppliers do not extend credit to brands they think are weakening.

how much working capital does extending DPO actually free up?

The math is straightforward: working capital unlocked equals (DPO change divided by 365) multiplied by annual COGS. YETI added 13.7 days on $767M COGS, freeing about $28.7M of working capital. Crocs added 7.4 days on $1.69B COGS, freeing about $34.5M. For a $50M brand with $25M COGS, extending DPO by 20 days frees about $1.37M of cash. That is not a one-time gain. It is permanent working capital you do not have to borrow. Across the 4 extenders in our cohort, total working capital unlocked vs FY2022 was $179M.

how do i extend DPO without damaging supplier relationships?

Three levers your suppliers actually accept. First, negotiate longer standard terms in exchange for volume commitments. A supplier will often give you net-60 instead of net-30 if you commit to 12 months of forecast volume. Second, use a supply chain finance program. Your bank pays the supplier in 15 days at a small discount; you pay the bank in 90. The supplier gets paid faster, you hold cash longer, and the bank takes a small margin. Third, take early-pay discounts when interest rates fall below the discount rate. At 8% borrowing cost, a 2-percent-10-net-30 discount is a 36% effective rate. Take the discount. The brands that get this wrong just stop paying on time, burn the relationship, and end up on cash-on-delivery the next quarter.

when does extending DPO backfire on your brand?

Three failure modes. First, when you stretch a supplier who has alternatives and they fire you as a customer. Most contract manufacturers have a queue; if you become the difficult account, you move to the back of it during the next shortage. Second, when you stretch without communication and the supplier finds out by missing payroll. Reputational damage compounds. Third, when stretching DPO masks a real cash problem. If you cannot pay in 30 because the unit economics are broken, pushing it to 60 just delays the reckoning by 30 days. The brands that did this best in 2022-2026 (YETI, Crocs, Lululemon) extended from a position of brand strength and explicit negotiation, not from desperation. The wounded brands that tried it (Allbirds, Beyond Meat) extended slightly but did not avoid the bigger problem of revenue collapse.

Sources and methodology

All financial figures sourced directly from SEC 10-K annual report filings via EDGAR. Cohort: 14 public DTC issuers (LULU, RVLV, SFIX, FIGS, WRBY, YETI, CROX, HNST, COCO, PRPL, BIRD, BYND, BODI, ETSY). DPO calculated as (accounts payable / cost of goods sold) x 365, using fiscal-year-end balance sheet and full-year income statement. FY assignment uses each company's fiscal calendar. For peers without a published FY2025 balance sheet at time of writing, FY2024 is the most recent year shown.

Federal Funds Rate (FEDFUNDS) and Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) sourced from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database, monthly observations January 2022 through April 2026. Working capital unlocked calculated as (DPO change in days / 365) x most recent annual COGS. Cohort medians: FY2022 = 38.6 days, FY2023 = 32.6 days, FY2024 = 35.5 days. The 4 strong-position extenders combined unlocked approximately $179.8M of working capital vs FY2022 levels.