Exit Planning Advice

Selling a Knives and Cutlery Retail Business

Market perceptions play a role in your ability to sell a knives and cutlery retail business. Yet great values are always received well in the business-for-sale marketplace. To increase your company's sale price, you'll need to perform adequate preparations, positioning it to the catch the eye of profit-minded buyers.

Dire economic forecasts have forced many knives and cutlery retail business sellers into hibernation. Instead of listing their companies now, they're hanging back until they see signs of an economic recovery.

There is no simple way to sell a business. But the most prepared knives and cutlery retail business sellers are achieving fair market value and more for their companies through persistence and the application of sound selling techniques.

Setting the Stage

Effective knives and cutlery retail business preparation focuses on communicating value to prospective buyers. Professional business brokers understand buyers and know how to properly communicate a knives and cutlery retail business to the marketplace. Specifically, brokers can advise you about the preparation of financial statements and other documents buyers expect to see in a premium knives and cutlery retail business opportunity.

Working with Appraisers

An experienced appraiser is part and parcel of a successful knives and cutlery retail business sale. Armed with a professional appraisal, both you and your broker can enter the negotiation stage with confidence. Even though you may disagree with the appraiser's value estimates, it's important to give your appraiser the information and independence he needs to present an objective opinion. To ensure accuracy, ask your broker to provide references for appraisers with industry experience.

Seller Financing

Capital is hard to come by these days. Banks and other lending institutions aren't eager to lend to unproven and undercapitalized knives and cutlery retail business buyers regardless of the business's potential. Rather than abandon their plans entirely, many buyers are pursuing finance concessions from sellers. It's common for sellers to finance as much as 70% of the purchase price with a payoff period of four or five years, sometimes in the form of a balloon payment at the end of the repayment period.

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