Help!... Business Mentor and Planning to Sell

[Steve Samuels]

Hi All,

I started a new business with my wife late last year. It's an eCommerce business selling Viking jewellery, drinking horns, and other Viking items. It has been well received, we have had more than 2000 customers, a good repeat customer rate, around 4000 email subscribers with a good open rate, over 10K followers on Facebook, that are quite engaged.

We have over 130 customer review on the Facebook page, and have built good relationships with our suppliers, and negotiated good prices with them.

While we enjoy running this company, and have a very fun engaging following, our goal is to get this company as automated as possible, and sell it next year.

Ideally we would like to end up with over £100K after selling the company. We have some good Facebook Ads, good custom audiences that have been proven to get good sales. SEO is also looking good, and we are getting more organic sales each month, and ranking higher and higher for more keywords.

I think that the most sensible thing for us would be to work with a business mentor to know how we plan for positioning the company for sale next year.

Can anyone please give some advice on how to select a good mentor. I believe that I should be looking for someone with a history of developing an selling eCommerce businesses, but I'm not too sure where to start.

Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, ideas and experiences.

Cheers,
Steve

 

[ethical PR]

What would make the company worth 100K to a potential buyer.

Not a business mentor but @Clinton knows a lot about buying and selling businesses?

 

[tony84]

I have just had a look online at viking drinking horns. They seem to be selling at around £30-ish.
Is that the sort of thing you sell?

Assuming it is and that you have sold to half of your customers twice and all sales were done in the last months. That gives you a £90k turnover.

If that is within the right ball park - I cant help but think £100,000 sale price is going to be way off the mark.

 

[CriticalThinker]

Nice to see that a business is thinking about preparing their business for sale well in advance of taking it to market to once!

I have plenty of experience in business mentoring, preparing a business for sale and then taking it through the sale process to completion so would be more than happy to have a free initial conversation with you and understand your business a bit more.

It sounds like you have got a good business with traction in the market place albeit a niche target audience. When looking for a business mentor first and foremost you need to be able to work with them and enjoy working with them. Ensure they understand your challenges and objectives and have the right skill set for this, they don't need to be industry experts; remember the client is usually the industry expert.

Happy to have a chat but either way good luck !

 

[The Byre]

@Clinton knows a lot about buying and selling businesses?

This! Visit the website, subscribe to the newsletter and build your company up and to a structure that can be sold. http://ukbusinessbrokers.com/

But one things stands out - right now, you are a 'Mom & Pop' operation selling goofy Viking stuff. A saleable company will have dozens of lines, seven-figure (+) turnover and paid management in place.

 

[dan19900]

Best not to post your niche on an open forum, especially when it's one with 70%+ profit margins and crap competition lol.

 

[Steve Samuels]

@tony84 That's about right for a basic horn, but we also have scultped, carved higher end things, and lots of other products in the same niche. It's not been uncommon for our return customers to purchase 4+ times. There are also some high value product lines in this niche, and our customers have amazing brand loyalty so far.

eCommerce and digital marketting isn't my strongest skill set, but we've had some very good months without really knowing more than understanding our market, and how to provide excellent customer service. Hence the desire for a good business mentor. What we are doing now is good, and it's a nice supplementary income, but I want to make it much better. I Know it can be.

@CriticalThinker It would be great to arrange a call, please do let me know when you're available and how best to get in touch.

@The Byre I appreciate your comments, it's always good to get a get a range of opinions, but unlike some we're not selling horny helmets or what you refer to as 'goofy' Viking stuff. The size of the niche that happens to be very passionate about Norse and 'Viking' culture is suprising, and if they respect the genuineness of a company, they are a loyal crowd. I agree that at the moment we are a small operation, and we have played on that to enable our success, as our customers like that we are relate-able, that said, I do want to scale up and that's why we are seeking guidance from someone with experience. We currently have around 300 products. It would be great to get to a 7 figure turnover and paid management immediately after launching the business, but if you've ever bootstrapped a company you'll appreciate that's not realistic. However, it is what we are working towards.

Both m wife and I work full time on our respective businesses, and this started as a little side project that's proven to have great potential, however I intend to seek the advice of people with more experience than myself to make it as good as possible, as quickly as possible.

@dan19900 You are 100% correct, I guess I'm way to used to openly discussing good ideas with people who just aren't willing to put the work in to compete. Getting of your backside is usually enough of a barrier to entry to prevent the competition, but I definitely shouldn't assume it will stop everyone competing.

Thanks all for the comments so far. I look forward to more responses.

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Gecko001]

I do not really get it. You have a small company that you run as a side line to your day jobs. It is doing quite well, but you do not want to go down the conventional route of leaving your day jobs, taking on employees, moving into bigger premises etc. etc, but instead you want to "automate" the company so that it will presumably almost run itself and all that you have to do is sit back and collect the profits. Why would you want to sell such a golden goose?

 

[Steve Samuels]

@Gecko001 I see why this may sound strange. The 'day job' is actually a result of me quitting my previous employment to start a company, for which I now a handful of employees and a decent size premises, but we are moving into bigger soon hopefully. My main business is an Internet of Things product development company, where we help our clients develop new products.

However, even though I put about 50 hours a week into growing my main company, I can't help but follow up on opportunities when I find them. We are currently looking to take on a better premise for the eCommerce company, as well as some local and remote staff to handle the operations. My hope is that if the business is automated enough and profitable enough that it will then be valuable enough for me to sell it. A big lump sum of cash would enable some of the other ridiculous plans I have for the future more than it trickling in month after month. I know I would potentially be selling of some of the long terms benefits of the company, but also any long term risks. I guess that's the trade-off.

Thanks for your comment.