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Selling business - worth

Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
Howdy all, I'm considering selling my business and partially retiring. My kids are grown, they both moved to my hometown area about 40 minutes away. I have 3 properties and am looking to sell them all and buy one house and bank the rest of the cash for full retirement. I had a leg injury last Spring that was somewhat of an awakening as to the amount of hours I work. I'm kinda burned out. The only option I have is to hire and at 50, I'm not interested in expanding.

Is the number calculated by what I pay myself + profit + equipment? I'm not worried about the building part, that I can sell easy, it's the numbers for the business I really need. The building is attractive as it has a nice retail area where I work from and an attached 40x50 pole shed that could be finished if one wanted to do installs on site. It has 10' door and a regular 2 car door. Just needs insulation, heat - I was always going to do that but then I didn't LOL

I'm not looking to get rich on the business end of it but it would be soooooo much easier to just sell all the equipment, and building to one person. So, I want to make the price appealing yet not give it away. Honestly, if I could get 50k for the business and then the building price on top of that, I would probably be happy if I could just walk away. I'm happy to private message my total sales...although it shouldn't be too hard to figure out. I'm one person and do mostly smaller signs, vans, trucks, apparel. I don't sub anything out. over $100k, less than $300k, with plenty of potential for a go-getter to make more. I turn down a lot of larger jobs because I don't have the skills to install 4x4 posts in the ground, I can't do full wraps, etc.

Equipment is just a HP 315, cold laminator, Summa cutter, a couple heat presses, very limited inventory - so under 20k total.

Almost all my customers are repeat, I have a very solid customer base.
 
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binki

binki

New Member
victor bogdanov said:
This might be a problem because like you said they are YOUR customers. The customers might not like the new owner etc.
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That is the buyer's problem. When you purchase you get all phone numbers associated with the business as well. That is important as well as a non-compete for a fixed time and radius around the location as well as not poaching any current or future customers in that timeframe.
 
JBurton

JBurton

Signtologist
binki said:
That is the buyer's problem. When you purchase you get all phone numbers associated with the business as well. That is important as well as a non-compete for a fixed time and radius around the location as well as not poaching any current or future customers in that timeframe.
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I usually see an onboarding clause, owner to remain and train for a period of time following the sale. In addition to teaching all the little things that one has picked up over the years, it's helpful to pass the customers over to the new owner with the old owner's reassurances.
Stacey, I hate to see you getting out, but I've always thought of owning a sign shop like owning a boat. The 'best' days for an owner are when you buy it, and when you sell it.
 
johnnysigns

johnnysigns

New Member
Onboarding is probably going to be a sticking point. I bought a business I helped manage for years and we still did onboarding in the deal. Complete strangers or someone not in the sign world is likely going to need that and the warm handshake transitioning customers. Onboarding also means to a buyer that you're not going to decide you hate retirement and sweep up your old clients after you've sold to someone new. Everything's negotiable, but I think Jburton's got a good point.
 
N

netsol

Premium Subscriber
JBurton said:
I usually see an onboarding clause, owner to remain and train for a period of time following the sale. In addition to teaching all the little things that one has picked up over the years, it's helpful to pass the customers over to the new owner with the old owner's reassurances.
Stacey, I hate to see you getting out, but I've always thought of owning a sign shop like owning a boat. The 'best' days for an owner are when you buy it, and when you sell it.
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there is a quote about how every man wants to own an nfl team, except the ones that do
 
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