Disclaimer: Unless noted otherwise, views and analysis expressed here are the author's own and based on public sources. The article is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional for investment decisions.

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“Do you remember what was happening in January 2021? Every stock was going to the moon. We had this business [WeCommerce] doing $40M revenue and $7M EBITDA, and the day we took it public, it jumps from $250M market cap to $1.2B”

Andrew Wilkinson, My First Million podcast, November 2025

Two weeks ago, we published a deep-dive on Tiny Ltd - the company that Andrew founded and chairs. You guys liked the story so much, we had no choice but to revisit the other poster child of the COVID e-commerce mania. Thrasio - the biggest Amazon FBA aggregator that ever existed. 

Andrew’s quote neatly captures the febrile zeitgeist of early 2021. Just as WeCommerce stock was roofing, Thrasio put out a bullish press release announcing the sixth raise in 14 months off the back of being “the fastest growing company in history”. 

Then, in September 2021, co-founder Joshua Silberstein left the company. Carlos Cashman, the second co-founder, followed in August 2022. 

Meanwhile, Thrasio was incinerating cash at an alarming rate. In 2021 & 2022, Thrasio was losing an average of $2M / day. In May 2022, it laid off one-fifth of the workforce. This didn't help. In 2023, Thrasio’s losses rose - to $3M / day:

Note: these figures appear somewhat out of tune with S&P’s estimates, for example, 2023 operating cash flow of -$299M (source). The difference might be due to impairments of inventory and goodwill.

Then, in February 2024, Thrasio filed for bankruptcy. A proper restructuring followed, allowing Thrasio to reduce its debt burden by almost $500M.

In December 2024, Thrasio's trustees sued the founders. Even today, scars run deep. A July 2025 S&P ratings report mentions “negative EBITDA and free operating cash flow (FOCF) over the next 12 months” and “the increased risk of another default” as it’s down to the last $50M.

For 2025, Thrasio is forecast to generate $324M in revenue - less than 1/3 what it did in 2022 ($1.3B) and with an EBITDA margin of -14%:

So what happened? How did the “fastest growing company in history” backed by Tier 1 investors (Silver Lake, Advent International, Oaktree, Goldman, BlackRock etc.) end up incinerating $3.4B in investor funding, which consisted of:

We've got you covered. 

In researching this article, we relied on court filings, third-party research like credit ratings reports, as well as bilateral conversations with industry insiders.

The article consists of 4 chapters:

1. FBA aggregator basics: What’s up with buying Amazon brands?   

2. Thrasio’s bestselling product category: its own stock

3. What else? Oh yeah, $800,000,000 in missing inventory

4. Were FBA aggregators doomed from the start?

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1. FBA aggregator basics: What’s up with buying Amazon brands?

As we explained in a 2023 “post mortem”, the phenomenon of FBA aggregators had first emerged in 2018 but really gained traction in 2020, when the worldwide experiment in social distancing triggered an e-commerce boom. In hindsight, the “step-change” in volumes was but a temporary boost - but who knew? Everyone from McKinsey to commentators on X was convinced of the permanent shift in e-commerce penetration that would not be reversed. 

Meanwhile, selling on Amazon was profitable and very, very easy… or at least that was the aggregators’ hypothesis. In the years prior to COVID, Amazon had ploughed in billions of dollars to create a worldwide logistics network known as Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA. By 2019, Amazon had surpassed DHL as the #1 provider of fulfillment and other logistics services - globally (source). 

As Amazon puts it, “send your products into Amazon’s global network of fulfillment centers, and we’ll pick, pack, and ship orders, as well as handle customer service and returns”. 

It’s that easy! 

Except, of course, the FBA bonanza didn't last. As lockdowns ended, the shift in demand did in fact retreat, with e-commerce penetration returning to its previous trajectory. Meanwhile, Amazon continued to jack up FBA rates, squeezing merchant margins. This reversal of fortunes, combined with an acute supply chain crisis (remember the blocked Suez canal?), meant that H2 2021 and most of 2022 were characterised by very difficult trading conditions for almost everyone in e-commerce, with sales falling and costs rising simultaneously:

By then, almost 100 FBA aggregators had raised $16B in equity and debt. I know this sounds puny in the AI era, but bear in mind, there was almost no capex involved. Most of the money was spent on M&A. Some was simply lost invested in inventory (more on that below).  

The M&A logic was seductively simple. Buy up small but profitable Amazon sellers for 2-3x EBITDA plus inventory, add centralised marketing and logistics  - and voila! - reap margin expansion and multiple arbitrage. 

In reality:

1. During COVID, competition for assets drove up M&A multiples from 2-3x EBITDA to 7x EBITDA. The aggregators believed they could still make the math work by a) stretching synergy assumptions and b) deferring more the purchase price - while reporting 100% of the acquired revenue and heavily pro forma earnings

2. Even in a zero interest rate world, aggregators were borrowing at double-digit interest rates. For example, Thrasio’s Series X preferred stock (entirely held by Oaktree) carried a 14.6% dividend!  

3. In this gold rush (Thrasio alone has made 200+ acquisitions), asset quality became a secondary concern. 

4. Internal controls were weak or non-existent. For example, it is alleged that Thrasio “had no functioning general ledger [...] its 2020 financial audit could not be completed until mid-2022”

And then there was the alleged self-dealing: the topic of our next chapter.  

2. Thrasio’s bestselling product category: its own stock

Thrasio Holdings Inc. was founded in 2018 by Carlos Cashman, Joshua Silberstein and Johnathan Hefter - in a wine cellar. In November 2018, Thrasio closed Acquisition #1: a pet-odour eliminator spray called Angry Orange.

This early success - Angry Orange sales grew from $2.5M to $23M in just 2 years - enabled Thrasio to raise a $6.5M seed round in April 2019, at a $22M valuation. Series A followed in November of the same year, delivering a valuation uplift of 8.6x vs seed. As COVID hit, Thrasio closed Series B in April 2020: $75M in preferred equity plus $35M in debt. The pre-money valuation had surged past the $700M mark. 

The best was yet to come. Series C (July 2020) brought in $260M at a $1B pre-money. And finally, Series D (October 2021) brought $1B at a $5-10B (exact figure undisclosed) pre-money valuation. 

This is where it gets really interesting: as Thrasio’s valuation vaulted into the 10-figure territory, insiders began to aggressively dump stock. 

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