Store harvesting.

Listening to podcasts about Ukraine and they were talking about how, with infrastructure starting to fail, the Russians have been forced to cannibalize non-functioning infrastructure to keep the rest of the system working. They called it "parts harvesting." Obviously, this is self-defeating. Less functioning units means less money to get more functioning units.

There is a parallel in business that I've seen over and over again. A store opens with the best inventory they can get. They start selling it. They don't replace it right away because they need the gross profit to pay bills. With less product, sales start dropping, so the store starts to sell remaining inventory in short-term "SALES!" Meaning they have even less product. And down the spiral they go. 

In my own experience it took years of struggle to get to the point where the inventory turnover paid for itself. I had to keep reinvesting in product which left little money for things like take-home"profit." (Tax wise, higher inventory is counted as profit, so double whammy--you pay tax on unsold product.)

The irony is, the capital investment is so large over time, that anyone with that kind of capital in the first place could probably make more money simply investing it in the stock market or bonds. 

Instead, after burning inventory, you are forced to borrow more money. Unless you've learned your lesson, the profits will instead go toward debt. You're paying out, instead of earning in. Borrowing money is also self-defeating if you aren't operationally producing profit.  

But you don't know that going in. 

The only thing you can do without capital is to keep pushing inventory a little higher over what you're comfortable doing and just squeaking by year after year until...overnight success!...you have enough in stock to actually pay for more store! pay your bills! and... wonder of wonders...earn a real profit!