How Tradebacked built a $4.79M private-credit fund around inventory nobody else would lend against

Somewhere in a third-party warehouse in the United States, there are pallets of raw materials a small manufacturer needs to keep producing. The manufacturer does not own those pallets right now. Tradebacked does. The manufacturer has the right to buy them back at the original price within 3 to 12 months, paying 1 to 1.5 percent a month for the privilege. That arrangement, repeated across dozens of small and medium-sized U.S. businesses, is the engine that Tradebacked’s fourth fund is built on.

Tradebacked Inc. is a private credit firm based in Aventura, Florida, founded in 2021. It does one thing: it gives small and medium-sized U.S. businesses a way to turn their inventory into working capital without taking on a traditional loan. The mechanism is a repurchase agreement. Tradebacked buys the inventory at a discount, at a loan-to-value ratio of up to 70 percent. The borrower keeps the right to repurchase it at the original price within a defined window. While the inventory sits in a third-party warehouse, it is independently valued by TCIS and insured by A-rated Relm Insurance. Every deal carries promissory notes, repurchase terms, and personal guarantees.

The reason the structure exists is that traditional lenders treat inventory the way they treat any other soft collateral: with skepticism, slow underwriting, and conservative advance rates. A small manufacturer with $2 million of raw materials in a warehouse and a payroll due Friday cannot wait six weeks for a bank’s asset-based lending team to assess the same pallets. Tradebacked moves faster because its only job is to look at inventory.

Before this raise, the firm had secured more than $6.5 million in equity commitments from promoters, ultra-high-net-worth individuals, and funds-of-funds. That capital base built the operating company. What it did not do was open the door to retail investors. Private credit, as a category, has historically been a closed room. The minimums are high. The vehicles are accredited-only. A retail investor who wanted exposure to this corner of credit usually could not get it.

Why a Reg CF raise for a private-credit fund

TB Fund 4 LLC is the vehicle Tradebacked launched to change that. The fund sits inside Tradebacked Fund LLC, which itself sits inside Tradebacked Inc., and it offers securities backed by trade finance assets through note purchase agreements. Honeycomb was the way to take that fund to a retail audience under Regulation Crowdfunding, where the minimum investment is small enough that someone curious about the asset class can take a real position without writing the kind of check a private placement requires.

The alternative was the path Tradebacked had already been on: keep raising from accredited investors, keep the fund accredited-only, keep the door closed. That path has its own logic. It is also a path that locks the firm into a single kind of investor relationship — one where the capital is large, the expectations are institutional, and the people writing checks are not the people whose own small businesses might one day be on the other side of a repurchase agreement. A retail raise widens the base in a way that matters for a firm whose entire borrower population is small businesses.

One hundred investors, $4.79M, twelve months

The campaign opened on May 14, 2025 and closed on April 29, 2026, just under twelve months later, at $4,790,500 raised from 100 investors. The fund is now capitalized to enter into repurchase agreements with U.S.-based SMEs and to purchase inventory under those agreements. The lien position on the offering covers any inventory purchased with funds raised through it.

One hundred investors is a different shape than the typical Honeycomb campaign. The average check size on this raise was just under $48,000, which is consistent with what a fund of this size and structure would attract — accredited and sophisticated retail investors writing meaningful positions rather than $200 community checks. The list looks less like a guest book and more like a roster of people who understood what they were buying. That is what a trade-finance fund needs. The asset class rewards investors who can read a promissory note and a personal guarantee and follow what they say.

The capital does one specific thing. It goes into the pool that funds the next set of repurchase agreements. When a U.S. manufacturer or distributor needs to free up working capital tied up in raw materials or finished goods, Tradebacked draws on the fund to purchase that inventory at up to 70 percent of its independently appraised value. The inventory moves into a secured third-party warehouse. The borrower has between 3 and 12 months to repurchase it. In the meantime, the borrower pays 1 to 1.5 percent a month. The fund earns from those payments. The investors in the fund earn from the fund.

The structure is unglamorous in a way that private credit usually is. There is no consumer brand, no retail storefront, no product to taste. There is a warehouse, an insurance policy, an appraisal, and a contract. The work of the next twelve months is the work the firm has been doing since 2021 — finding small businesses with inventory and a cash-flow problem, sizing the deal, putting the paperwork in place, and getting the working capital out the door. The retail raise is the part that is new.