Six gates.40% declined.
Roughly four in ten candidate deals are rejected before they reach the public cycle book. The six-gate framework is the decision path.
Market demand
Three or more independent demand signals, velocity, retail depth, search trend, regional import intensity.
Supplier vetting
Licence, UBO, sanctions screening, references, factory audit and sample testing where relevant.
Margin modelling
Conservative, base and optimistic cases. Base case must clear platform threshold.
Competitive scan
Live pricing, stock depth and saturation across the candidate resale lanes.
Logistics clearance
Origin, freight, destination import, hub capacity and last-mile availability verified.
Committee approval
Multi-reviewer sign-off on a written brief with all gate evidence attached.
Evidence for every gate is retained for the life of the cycle and beyond, seven years minimum for AML purposes, longer where required by local regulation. Evidence is referenced from the cycle brief and, where public-shareable, linked on the published brief.
Declined candidates are also archived. If a supplier or category is revisited later, the prior decline record is part of the new gate-2 review.
Pricing model, channel mix, realised-case assumption.
Supplier logistics, hub capacity, last-mile availability.
Sanctions screening, category restrictions, documentary compliance.
The cycles that clear curation.Read the briefs.
Only the ~60% that pass every gate reach the public book. Evidence attached to each.