For UK shop owners watching stock and quiet hours go to waste
Turn slow-moving stock into business purchasing power.
The lines that sit on the shelf, the afternoons that stay quiet, the ranges left over at the end of a season — put them to work and earn Silva to spend across the network.
Instead of marking it down to clear it, put that stock to work and spend it back.
No cash changes hands for Silva · You choose exactly what you list · UK members only
Sound familiar?
A capacity exchange isn't the goal. Fixing these is.
Every independent retailer feels at least one of these. Almost none connect them to the stock and space they’re already sitting on.
Is capital tied up in stock?
Money sits on the shelf as inventory, earning nothing while it waits to sell.
Stuck with lines that won't move?
Slow sellers and end-of-range items you can’t shift at full price.
Do quiet hours cost you anyway?
The shop is staffed and lit whether anyone walks in or not.
Are markdowns giving margin away?
Every sale rack is margin you built, handed straight back to clear space.
Left with seasonal overstock?
What doesn’t sell this season gets discounted hard or written off.
Are rent, rates and energy climbing?
Fixed costs on the unit keep rising — footfall doesn’t follow.
What almost everyone misses
The stock that won’t shift, the quiet weekday hours, the space on the shelf — that is real value already sitting inside your shop. Silvatree is the mechanism that turns that stock and shelf space into business purchasing power you can spend.
The idea
One week’s work. Two pots, not one.
The old way: work hard, cash in, cash out, bills paid, nothing left. With Silvatree you generate the same cash, but you also fill a second pot by selling idle capacity to Silvatree members. The two-pot way is: cash in, less cash out, some cash remaining — and Silva in, Silva out, paying the rest of the bills. The second pot is business purchasing power.
Wages, rent and tax drain it. A full week of work — and nothing left to show for it.
Your cash pays the expenses that can only be paid in cash — rent, wages, electricity, leases, taxes. A second pot fills from idle capacity you'd have wasted, and pays for marketing, repairs, printing, accounting, cleaning and tradesmen.
1 Silva = £1 for tax & accounting · spending power inside the network, never exchanged for cash.
How it works
Three steps, from slow stock to purchasing power.
You have spare capacity
Slow-moving lines, seasonal overstock, quiet weekday hours — value that sits on the shelf earning nothing.
Silvatree puts it to work
We match the stock and space you list to members who need it. You get paid in Silva for what would otherwise be marked down or written off.
You spend your Silva
On the things your shop already buys — window displays, signage, accounting, shopfitting, marketing — keeping your cash in the till.
New to the idea? What is a Capacity Exchange?
Where it hides
Find the spare capacity inside your shop.
If it goes to waste when it doesn't sell — a line, an hour, a foot of shelf — it belongs here.
Stock that won’t shift
List the ranges sitting in the stockroom instead of marking them down.
End-of-season leftovers
Move what’s left when the season turns, before it’s written off.
Discontinued and clearance
Turn last season’s ranges into purchasing power rather than a sale rack.
The midweek lull
The afternoons that run quiet are staffed and open regardless.
Prime display space
Space that earns nothing the moment it sits empty.
Room to feature more
Put idle floor space behind lines that would otherwise sit still.
Spare workshop hours
For makers and bespoke shops — book out the hours between orders.
Underused fulfilment
Capacity to pack and hand over more than today’s orders fill.
Why it's safer
Business trading, without the borrowed money.
Most trade exchanges quietly let the owner/operator run up a large negative trade balance it never has to repay — diluting the value of every other member’s credits. Silvatree is built so that can never happen.
We can never owe the network
Silvatree's own accounts have a hard zero floor. We can't hold a negative balance or extend ourselves a line of credit — full stop.
Silva is earned, never printed
A Silva only exists because a real trade happened between two members. It can't be created out of thin air or bought for cash.
A Reserve Fund stands behind you
If a member ever leaves owing, the Reserve Fund absorbs it immediately — so positive balances stay protected whatever happens next.
If we ever wind down, we go last
Our own balance is wiped out first, leaving more in the pot for members. We put the network ahead of ourselves by design.
How we prove it
Our ledger is built so the network always sums to zero.
This isn't a choice — it's how we protect the system, and it's how the ledger was constructed. Here's what that means for your balance.
The network always sums to zero. Every Silva earned is a Silva owed — the whole system balances to nothing, by construction.
No outsized balances. No member is allowed to sit on a large positive or negative position that could destabilise the network.
Silvatree's own accounts are always positive. The company can never hold a negative balance. It can never owe the system. It cannot issue itself Silva — it can only earn it like every other member. Both the rules and the platform architecture enforce this.
These rules are set out in the Silvatree Exchange Terms & Conditions — the rules the whole network runs on.
Straight talk on fees
Three fees. The same for every member.
There are no tiers at Silvatree — no bronze, silver or gold, and no badge attached to how much you trade. Every member pays the same three fees, worked out the same way, and what you pay turns on one thing: how much of your existing spending you decide to route through the network. Charging by size of business would be arbitrary, because a large firm might trade very little and a small one a great deal. A flat fee would mean the smallest members subsidise the largest.
Joining fee
2%
of the spending you declare
- Minimum £200, maximum £6,000
- Paid once, on admission
Monthly subscription
£20
a month, plus 0.2% of your declared spend ÷ 12
- £24.17 a month on a £25,000 declaration
- £20 more in months you put nothing into the network
Transaction fee
6% + 1%
in cash, and in Silva
- Paid by the seller on each exchange
- The 1% in Silva funds the Reserve Fund
That is the whole structure. There is nothing else to pay — no tier to upgrade to, no charge for finding you buyers, and no fee for closing your account.
- ✓All fees are exclusive of VAT.
- ✓We never charge interest on Trading Headroom, and never take security or personal guarantees.
- ✓If a full year of genuine engagement has not delivered, we refund your joining fee.
What members say
From members
“I joined Silvatree 2 months ago and have already accumulated three new clients for my digital marketing services.”
I have been able to go from operating at 50% capacity to 75% and have subsequently been able to use my Silva to pay for a business coach who is helping me to scale my business and attract more clients, as well as paying for my accounting services and bookkeeping.
“As accountants we have experienced a great influx of new clients that we would never have previously had.”
This has increased our bottom line, and enabled us to help many who would otherwise not have had the cash to pay for our services — which means we can pay for many business expenses in Silva that we would otherwise have paid for in cash.
Questions
Retail: common questions
- What counts as spare capacity for a shop?
- Slow-moving and end-of-line stock, seasonal overstock, quiet weekday trading hours and empty shelf or window space. It's value that sits there earning nothing until it sells — the kind of capacity you'd otherwise mark down or write off.
- Do we have to list all our stock?
- No. You choose exactly which lines and how much floor or shelf space you put on the exchange, so you can keep your best sellers on full-price sale and only move the stock that would otherwise be discounted to clear.
- What can we spend the Silva we earn on?
- On the things the shop already buys from other members — window displays, signage, shopfitting, accounting and marketing — keeping your cash in the till. Silva is a unit of account (1 Silva = £1 for record-keeping) and is spending power inside the network, not cash you withdraw.
- Isn't this just marking stock down another way?
- No. A markdown gives your margin away to clear space; here you turn slow stock into Silva you spend on real business costs, at 1 Silva = £1. You still choose what you list and what you charge for it.
Silvatree works across sectors
One model, told through the spare capacity in each industry.
- Hotels & staysMidweek rooms, off-season nights and unsold spa slots.
- RestaurantsQuiet midweek covers and dark private dining rooms.
- Salons & clinicsUnbooked chairs, quiet treatment rooms and slow mornings.
- Print & productionIdle press hours, quiet studio and finishing time.
- Media & outdoorUnsold billboards, unbooked airtime and blank pages.
- Trades & servicesGaps between jobs, cancelled bookings and quiet weeks.
- Professional servicesUnbilled hours, bench time and quiet post-year-end weeks.
Find out if Silvatree is right for your business.
Book a free suitability call. We run an expense analysis, share a capacity & profit report, and tell you honestly whether it's a fit — we'll be the first to say if it isn't.
Not ready to join? No pressure. Go on our standby list and we'll get in touch whenever there's business we can send your way.
Not sure yet? Take the 2-minute readiness test.
Short of time? Talk it through with our AI capacity adviser — available 24/7. It'll cover most of what we'd discuss on the call.