This is the list we work through ourselves before buying a brand in the $1M–$15M range. Nothing here is proprietary and none of it requires us. Work through it over two years and you will sell for more, to someone better, with less pain in diligence, whether or not that someone is us.
In roughly the order they will cost you money. Each one is worth starting now rather than in the quarter before you go to market, because most of them take a full financial year to fix properly.
Map every customer and channel above 10% of revenue. One retailer at 40% is priced as a risk, not a strength. Two years is enough time to bring the top account below 25% by growing everything else.
A clean monthly close within 15 days. No personal expenses in the P&L. Accrual, not cash, if you can manage it. Every hour a buyer spends untangling your numbers is deducted from what they pay you.
A signed agreement with your co-packer covering price, minimums and lead times. A qualified second source, even if you never use it. A sole supplier on a handshake is a single point of failure a buyer has to underwrite, and they will underwrite it pessimistically.
Every claim on every label and every page, with the substantiation filed behind it. In supplements this is the issue that ends deals outright rather than merely repricing them. If you cannot produce the file in an afternoon, you do not have one.
These are the ones nobody mentions until diligence, and they are the two most likely to cost you a chunk of the price in the last fortnight of a deal.
Both are fixable in months rather than years, and both are invisible from inside the business, which is exactly why they get missed.
Trademarks registered in every market you sell in, held by the company rather than by you personally. Domains, social handles and the customer database all in the company name. Formulations documented somewhere other than one person’s head.
List every relationship, decision and login that runs only through you, then hand three of them to someone else this quarter. If the business stops when you go on holiday, a buyer is purchasing a job rather than a company, and they price it that way.
The same work makes the business better to own in the meantime: cleaner margins, less key-person risk, fewer surprises. That is why it is worth doing whether or not you ever sell.
Send us a note and we will tell you honestly which of these six would cost you the most. No NDA needed for that conversation, and no obligation on either side.
