Companies with a name and real customers, in distress or at a turning point.
Brand-led product and manufacturing businesses with $5M to $30M in revenue. Our first focus is distress and restructuring: losses, a strained balance sheet, a lender losing patience, a court process. We also buy healthy companies whose owner is ready to hand over. Financials do not need to be good. They need to be fixable by someone who has fixed them before.
The numbers.
Specific enough to screen against. Close counts: if a deal is near these parameters and the situation is right, send it and say why.
Where we are the right buyer.
We are most useful where there is real restructuring work to do, and least useful in a business that is already optimised and simply needs a cheque.
01In court.
Chapter 11 and Subchapter V cases, 363 sales, asset purchases out of a proceeding, stalking-horse bids where the size fits. The American version of what we did at Fogal, bought out of bankruptcy, rebuilt from zero and sold, and at Borsalino, taken through its insolvency proceeding and turned around.
02Lender-driven and out of court.
A company in forbearance, a lender that wants out, an Article 9 sale, a Florida assignment for the benefit of creditors, a receivership. Often faster and cheaper than a filing, and often the last moment the business can still be saved whole.
03A good name, a tired business.
Decades of brand equity and customer loyalty, but flat or declining sales, a cost base and a distribution model built for another era. Distress has not arrived yet; it is on its way.
04Succession, on the owner's timetable.
A healthy company whose founder or family wants out, or wants to step back, with no one inside ready to own it. We buy control and keep what works. The owner can stay on for a few years, or leave at closing; both are structures we have used.
05Carve-outs and orphans.
A brand or division that no longer fits its parent's strategy and has been starved of attention, often sold under pressure when the parent itself is restructuring.
06Cross-border.
A European brand that needs to be built properly in the United States, or a U.S. business with a European opportunity nobody inside can execute.
So nobody wastes a week.
Minority stakes
We operate what we own. Without control we cannot do the work that creates the value. A seller keeping up to 49% is welcome.
Pre-revenue, venture, or "the brand is the plan"
We buy companies with customers and history, not decks.
Real estate, restaurants
Not where our operating experience applies. Businesses with a product, a supply chain and a name in their market are where we add value.
Biotech and medtech
Regulatory and scientific risk we are not equipped to underwrite or operate.
We pay for what exists and structure for what we will build.
In a distressed sale, we price the assets, the customers and the work the business needs, not a multiple of earnings that no longer exist, and we bid to the process timetable. In a healthy company, a fair multiple of normalised earnings for the business as it is today; where the seller believes in upside we have not underwritten, we bridge it with structure rather than argue about it: earn-outs tied to agreed metrics, seller notes, rollover equity. Senior, mezzanine or bank debt where the cash flows support it, never so much that the company cannot breathe during the restructuring.
The companies worth owning are the ones most people would walk away from. The difference is knowing which ones can be rebuilt, and being willing to do the work.Founding principle