Polished.com (POLCQ) Risk Analysis

Maintaining and enhancing our brands is critical to acquiring and expanding our base of customers and suppliers. Our ability to maintain and enhance our brands depends largely on our ability to maintain customer confidence in our product and customer service offerings, including by delivering products on time and without damage. If customers do not have a satisfactory shopping experience, they may seek out alternative offerings from our competitors and may not return to our sites as often in the future, or at all. In addition, unfavorable publicity regarding, for example, our practices relating to privacy and data protection, product quality, delivery problems, competitive pressures, litigation or regulatory activity could seriously harm our reputation. Such negative publicity also could have an adverse effect on the size, engagement, and loyalty of our customer base and result in decreased revenue, which could adversely affect our business and financial results. A significant portion of our customers' brand experience also depends on third parties outside of our control, including suppliers and logistics providers such as R+L Carriers, AM Home Delivery and other third-party delivery agents. If these third parties do not meet our or our customers' expectations, our brands may suffer irreparable damage. In addition, maintaining and enhancing these brands may require us to make substantial investments in launching new brands or introducing new products or offerings, and these investments may not be successful. If we fail to promote, maintain, and improve our brands and products, or if we incur excessive expenses in this effort, our business, operating results and financial condition may be materially adversely affected. We anticipate that, as our market becomes increasingly competitive, maintaining and enhancing our brands or products may become increasingly difficult and expensive. Maintaining and enhancing our brands will depend largely on our ability to provide high quality products to our customers and a reliable, trustworthy and profitable sales channel to our suppliers, which we may not be able to do successfully. Customer complaints or negative publicity about our sites, products, delivery times, customer data handling and security practices or customer support, especially on blogs, social media websites and our sites, could rapidly and severely diminish consumer use of our sites and consumer and supplier confidence in us and result in harm to our brands.

Our ability to grow our business depends on our ability to retain our existing customer base and generate increased revenue and repeat purchases from this customer base, and maintain high levels of customer engagement. To do this, we must continue to provide our customers and potential customers with a unified, convenient, efficient and differentiated shopping experience by: - providing imagery, tools and technology that attract customers who historically would have bought elsewhere;- maintaining a high-quality and diverse portfolio of products;- delivering products on time and without damage; and - maintaining and further developing our online and mobile platforms. If we fail to increase net revenue per active customer, generate repeat purchases or maintain high levels of customer engagement, our growth prospects, operating results and financial condition could be materially adversely affected.

Our success depends on our ability to acquire and retain customers in a cost-effective manner through marketing efforts and maintenance of our brand. In order to expand our customer base, we must appeal to and acquire customers who have historically used other means of commerce to purchase home goods and may prefer alternatives to our offerings, such as the websites of our competitors or our suppliers' own websites. We have made significant investments related to customer acquisition and expect to continue to spend significant amounts to acquire additional customers. Our advertising efforts consist primarily of email marketing, online advertisements and promotions, digital marketing and social media. These efforts are expensive and may not result in the cost-effective acquisition of customers. We cannot assure you that the net profit from new customers we acquire will ultimately exceed the cost of acquiring those customers through enhancements to the customer experience on our websites, mobile-optimized websites and mobile operations. If we fail to deliver a quality shopping experience, or if consumers do not perceive the products we offer to be of high value and quality, we may not be able to acquire new customers. If we are unable to acquire new customers who purchase products in numbers sufficient to grow our business, we may not be able to generate the scale necessary to drive beneficial network effects with our suppliers or efficiencies in our logistics network, our net revenue may decrease, and our business, financial condition and operating results may be materially adversely affected. We believe that many of our new customers originate from word-of-mouth and other non-paid referrals from existing customers. Therefore, we must ensure that our existing customers remain loyal to us in order to continue receiving those referrals. If our efforts to satisfy our existing customers are not successful, we may not be able to acquire new customers in sufficient numbers to continue to grow our business, or we may be required to incur significantly higher marketing expenses in order to acquire new customers.

The number of people who access the Internet through devices other than personal computers, including mobile phones, smartphones, handheld computers such as notebooks and tablets, video game consoles, and television set-top devices, has increased dramatically in the past few years. We continually upgrade existing technologies and business applications to keep pace with these rapidly changing and continuously evolving technologies, and we may be required to implement new technologies or business applications in the future. The implementation of these upgrades and changes requires significant investments and as new devices and platforms are released, it is difficult to predict the problems we may encounter in developing applications for these alternative devices and platforms. Additionally, we may need to devote significant resources to the support and maintenance of such applications once created. Our results of operations may be affected by the timing, effectiveness and costs associated with the successful implementation of any upgrades or changes to our systems and infrastructure to accommodate such alternative devices and platforms. Further, in the event that it is more difficult or less compelling for our customers to buy products from us on their mobile or other devices, or if our customers choose not to buy products from us on such devices or to use mobile or other products that do not offer access to our sites, our customer growth could be harmed and our business, financial condition and operating results may be materially adversely affected.

Some of the products we sell may expose us to product liability and other claims and litigation (including class actions) or regulatory action relating to safety, personal injury, death or environmental or property damage. Some of our agreements with members of our supply chain may not indemnify us from product liability for a particular product, and some members of our supply chain may not have sufficient resources or insurance to satisfy their indemnity and defense obligations. Although we maintain liability insurance, we cannot be certain that our coverage will be adequate for liabilities actually incurred or that insurance will continue to be available to us on economically reasonable terms, or at all.

As part of offering our suppliers' products for sale on our sites, suppliers are often responsible for conducting a number of traditional retail operations with respect to their respective products, including maintaining inventory and preparing merchandise for shipment to our customers. In these instances, we may be unable to ensure that suppliers will perform these services to our or our customers' satisfaction in a manner that provides our customer with a unified brand experience or on commercially reasonable terms. If our customers become dissatisfied with the services provided by our suppliers, our business, reputation and brands could suffer.

We have relationships with numerous suppliers. Our agreements with suppliers are generally terminable at will by either party upon short notice. If we do not maintain our existing relationships or build new relationships with suppliers on acceptable commercial terms, we may not be able to maintain a broad selection of merchandise, and our business and prospects would suffer severely. Part of our business with our suppliers is conducted through our participation in DMI's purchasing group arrangement. For the years ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, we purchased a substantial portion of finished goods from DMI, representing 69.2% and 72.1% of purchases, respectively. Our participation in this consortium provides us with leverage and purchasing power with appliance vendors, and increases our ability to compete with competitors. If the relationship between DMI and suppliers materially changes, or if we are unable to participate in DMI on materially the same terms as we currently participate, then there is a risk that the prices of finished goods may increase or the availability of finished goods to the Company would decrease. In order to attract quality suppliers, we must: - demonstrate our ability to help our suppliers increase their sales;- offer suppliers a high-quality, cost-effective fulfillment process; and - continue to provide suppliers with a dynamic and real-time view of our demand and inventory needs. If we are unable to provide our suppliers with a compelling return on investment and an ability to increase their sales, we may be unable to maintain and/or expand our supplier network, which would negatively impact our business. Our agreements with most of our suppliers do not provide for the long-term availability of merchandise or the continuation of particular pricing practices, nor do they usually restrict such suppliers from selling products to other buyers. There can be no assurance that our current suppliers will continue to seek to sell us products on current terms or that we will be able to establish new or otherwise extend current supply relationships to ensure product acquisitions in a timely and efficient manner and on acceptable commercial terms. Our ability to develop and maintain relationships with reputable suppliers and offer high quality merchandise to our customers is critical to our success. If we are unable to develop and maintain relationships with suppliers that would allow us to offer a sufficient amount and variety of quality merchandise on acceptable commercial terms, our ability to satisfy our customers' needs, and therefore our long-term growth prospects, would be materially adversely affected. Further, we rely on our suppliers' representations of product quality, safety and compliance with applicable laws and standards. If our suppliers or other vendors violate applicable laws, regulations or our supplier code of conduct, or implement practices regarded as unethical, unsafe, or hazardous to the environment, it could damage our reputation and negatively affect our operating results. Further, concerns regarding the safety and quality of products provided by our suppliers could cause our customers to avoid purchasing those products from us, or avoid purchasing products from us altogether, even if the basis for the concern is outside of our control. As such, any issue, or perceived issue, regarding the quality and safety of any items we sell, regardless of the cause, could adversely affect our brand, reputation, operations and financial results. Moreover, we depend on our ability to provide our customers with a wide range of products from qualified suppliers in a timely and efficient manner. Political and economic instability, the financial stability of suppliers, suppliers' ability to meet our standards, labor problems experienced by suppliers, the availability or cost of raw materials, merchandise quality issues, currency exchange rates, trade tariff developments, transport availability and cost, transport security, inflation, the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors relating to our suppliers are beyond our control. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected supplier facilities and operations due to factory closures, raw material and labor inflation and risks of labor shortages, among other things. Similar disruptions may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and operating results. We also are unable to predict whether any of the countries in which our suppliers' products are currently manufactured or may be manufactured in the future will be subject to new, different, or additional trade restrictions imposed by the U.S. or foreign governments or the likelihood, type or effect of any such restrictions. Any event causing a disruption or delay of imports from suppliers with international manufacturing operations, including the imposition of additional import restrictions, restrictions on the transfer of funds or increased tariffs or quotas, could increase the cost or reduce the supply of merchandise available to our customers and materially adversely affect our financial performance as well as our reputation and brand. Furthermore, some or all of our suppliers' foreign operations may be adversely affected by political and financial instability, resulting in the disruption of trade from exporting countries, restrictions on the transfer of funds or other trade disruptions. In addition, our business with foreign suppliers may be affected by changes in the value of the U.S. dollar relative to other foreign currencies. For example, any movement by any other foreign currency against the U.S. dollar may result in higher costs to us for those goods. Declines in foreign currencies and currency exchange rates might negatively affect the profitability and business prospects of one or more of our foreign suppliers. This, in turn, might cause such foreign suppliers to demand higher prices for merchandise in their effort to offset any lost profits associated with any currency devaluation, delay merchandise shipments, or discontinue selling to us altogether, any of which could ultimately reduce our sales or increase our costs.

Our business depends on consumer discretionary spending, and our results are highly dependent on U.S. consumer confidence and the health of the U.S. economy. Consumer spending may be affected by many factors outside of the Company's control, including general economic conditions; consumer disposable income; consumer confidence and perception of economic conditions; the threat or outbreak of war, terrorism or public unrest (including, without limitation, the conflict in Ukraine) which may cause supply chain disruptions, increase fuel costs and transportation costs, and create general economic instability; wage and unemployment levels; consumer debt and inflationary pressures; the costs of basic necessities and other goods; effects of weather and natural disasters caused by climate change or otherwise; and epidemics, contagious disease outbreaks, and other public health concerns including the COVID-19 pandemic. Adverse economic changes in any of the regions in which we sell our products could reduce consumer confidence and could negatively affect net revenue and have a material adverse effect on our operating results. Consumers may view a substantial portion of the products we offer as discretionary items rather than necessities. As a result, our results of operations are sensitive to changes in macro-economic conditions that impact consumer spending, including discretionary spending. Decreases in consumer discretionary spending may result in a decrease in comparable sales, and average value per transaction, which might cause us to increase promotional activities, which will have a negative impact on our gross margins, all of which could negatively affect the Company's business, operations, liquidity, financial results and stock price, particularly if consumer spending levels are depressed for a prolonged period of time.