Building and then Selling a New England Company
January 2012 – Kick-off Speaker: Jerry Shafir, founder and CEO of Kettle Cuisine (Chelsea, MA). After 25 years of doing every job and building the business, last month Jerry achieved a brilliant culmination, in a deal with the Arlon Food and Investment Program, the investment arm of Continental Grain.
Discussion Points:
- Should I build my company with the explicit goal of selling it?
- Impact of a board of directors with outside members
- M&A intermediary’s role
- Preparing for a sale—five years, two years, one year, and six months beforehand
- Choosing when to sell
- Fielding unsolicited inquiries from acquirers and intermediaries
- Navigating the intense phase of buyer vetting and deal negotiation
At our CEO events, everyone sits at one table. We begin with mingling and dinner, and then have two hours of candid discussion. Events are held on selected weeknights from 5:30-8:30 pm and are moderated by Jim Johnston, founder of Johnston Company in Lexington, MA. Read about Jim.
Food CEOs: Building Branded Sales through Retail Chains
September 2011 – Kick-off Speaker: Brad Sterl, founder and CEO of Rustic Crust (Pittsfield, NH). Brad’s Rustic Crust brand par-baked pizza crusts are now available in 5,900 retail locations. His American Flatbread brand frozen pizzas are available in 2,700 retail locations. He also has significant private label business.
Discussion Points:
- Pros and cons of branded vs. private label. Can I do both?
- Slotting, coupons, manufacturer charge-backs, sampling, consumer events, and advertising pros and cons. How much should I spend? Any keys to tracking all this spending?
- Gross margin targets
- Managing brokers
- Expanding beyond the first region or type of retailer
- Identifying the influential retailers for my product
- Trading horror stories.
Selling Your Company
June 2011: Our kick-off speaker for the event was Salvatore Lanuto:
Sal joined JJWild, a small manufacturing rep firm with revenues of under $1M, in 1991. He became President in 1996 and CEO in 2000. Upon joining the company he directed major strategy shift to leverage its long standing relationship with Meditech Information Technology, one of the top Hospital Information Systems in the country. Refocusing the company on healthcare IT integration, the company became Meditech’s largest integrator, growing top line revenue to over $90M at the time of its acquisition by Perot Systems in 2007. Perot has since been acquired by DELL. Just one year before, he orchestrated a company recapitalization, partnering with private equity firm Advent International, and GE Capital. Prior to joining JJWild, Sal was Vice President of Marketing for Esprit Systems Inc., a leading manufacturer, seller, and distributor of computer terminals. Sal also worked at Hazeltine Corporation, a defense contractor and developer of high tech systems for the government. Sal earned his B.S. from Columbia University.
Sal has recently come out of retirement to direct start up company Service Heartbeat. Heartbeat provides software that enhances the use of mobile technology to improve communications among healthcare providers in order to drive better healthcare delivery.
The roundtable focused on these discussion topics:
- Systematically find buyers
- How to get the best deal
- Managing stress and risk of a transaction
- Life after the sale
- Pros and cons of building a business with the explicit, constant goal of selling it
- How far ahead should you plan a sale?
- What makes an owner ready, personally, to sell?
- What makes a business ready to sell?
- Should you try to predict who will buy and why?
- How can you deal with an offer you didn’t seek, or expect?
Running Your Project-Oriented Business
March / April 2011:
- How important is career path to people I recruit and retain? Should I think about it more?
- How can we get delivery people to care about the quality of delivery, client satisfaction, profitability and the follow-on sale?
- What makes for a good hand-off from sales to delivery, and a good kick-off of work?
- How can I create a 40-, 50-, 60- or 70-hour “culture”, how do I select among these, and what do I do about people who work a lot more or fewer hours?
- How do project managers learn to be “revenue-aware”?
- Should I think of intellectual property as an important asset, or a sideshow?
- What are the keys to identifying follow-on work and selling it?
Johnston Company offers CEO events throughout the year. Only presidents and CEOs attend. Everyone sits at the same table. We begin with mingling and dinner, then have two hours of candid discussion. Events are held on selected weeknights from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.
Contact us for more information: ClaireS@JohnstonCompany.com
