Thinking Of Selling Pet Collar Business

[NicoleAlaine]

I have an established Etsy business with a separate standalone website and an established local wholesale clientele (Portland, OR). My business has been very successful and every year I am finding myself busier than the last. However I am also a mother of two young children (10mo and 2yr) and it is becoming apparent to me that running a business is too much for me at this time. It kills me to do it, but I am thinking that selling my business or simply liquidating my assets may be the best thing for my family at this time. It would be awesome to sell the business as-is and have an established leatherworker step in and take over for me, but I don't know if there would be any interest in an established business. That is what I am trying to gauge here. Please let me know if this is something any of you would be interested in. I have not done inventory for a while so I don't know what liquidating my stock would look like, but if you are interested let me know and I can try to get a price figured out.

If you are interested please PM me and I can give you more details. I have been really well received and reviewed and simply hate to close the business altogether!

Any feedback is welcome.

Thanks,

Nicole

Edited August 15, 2014 by NicoleAlaine

[steadybrook]

What is your esty business name?

[camano ridge]

You might want to list your Etsy store and your web site as well as telling us what all a person would get if they bought your business. You might also get some information together for someone that is seriously interested, such as What is your wholesale base how many items do you sell each year to that whalesale base. You say your business has gone up each year or that you are busier each year. Give some statistics. I sold one collar last year and i sell two colars this year I can say I am busier then last year. You need some hard figures. You need to convince me that buying your business is a better deal then buying a business license astrippp of leather and making a couple of collars and putting them on my own Ebay store.

[NicoleAlaine]

Hi and thanks for the replies! I didn't list much detail because I am really just putting my feelers out at this point, and trying to get an idea of whether my business would have any value to another leatherworker. As Camano Ridge said, why wouldn't you just go out and get some leather and start your own shop? Hopefully I can answer some of your questions and get a better idea of whether my business is really sellable.

My Etsy store is Cascade Leatherworks (www.cascadeleatherworks.etsy.com) and my standalone site is www.cascadeleatherworks.com. You can get an idea of the types of collars and such that I am selling there. I have not really done any tooling, just some stamping of names/phone #s, etc, so someone with fairly basic leatherworking skills would probably be able to take over for me.

My wholesale business is limited to two local stores right now, one of which carries a small amount of latigo leashes and the other carries a full run of collars and leashes in three different colors amounting to about 150-200 items so far since establishment (3 months ago). I of course would not be able to guarantee that these wholesale customers would want to continue with a non-local seller if the business was sold but I would do my best to act a a liaison so that the business could continue as previously.

I had in the past had several other wholesale clients, and have been very well received in general, so I don't doubt that there is a lot of potential for wholesale business. My plan before deciding to sell my business had been to grow my wholesale clients, and I don't doubt that another person could as well, either in their own area or online. I have also had multiple contacts from online retailers interested in selling my products, and was just in the process of establishing a wholesale account with Etsy to reach a broader audience.

I have been fairly successful also on my website, but have not done much to tap that resource yet. I have only done some very basic SEO optimization but have had pretty good sales. I started the website in Feb 2013 and had 33 orders (55 items) $1100 of sales in 2013 and 28 orders (73 items) $1,050 in 2014 (Jan-August). I think there is a lot of potential for growth here as the website gets optimized and repeat sales increase.

My main source of business income has been my Etsy store. I opened my store in 2010 and only had 6 orders ($200 of sales) in 2010 and 9 orders in 2011. In 2012 I came back from a break and had 85 orders (did about $2000), then in 2013 had 350 orders (did $7100). In 2014 between January and July I had 370 orders (grossed $8000), so you can see I am not exaggerating about business growth. Note that these numbers are not a tally of individual items so the items I sold is significantly higher.

As far as what someone purchasing my business would get, I think that would depend partly on what they wanted and the price would be negotiated accordingly. It would include my full inventory (probably in the $2000 range retail value), as well as whatever info they wanted about my processes and procedures, and sources for my materials. My material sources represents years of perfecting my products so that I was using the sealants, dyes, rivets, etc, that gave the best function for lasting use. It would also include a non-competition agreement so there would be no concerns about me going back into business later. If the person wanted to purchase my business name, URL, and website I would be willing to negotiate that. The only catch with that is that Etsy does not allow transfers of ownership for stores. However if someone were interested in an Etsy store and had purchased my business name they would be able to open their own Etsy store with a slightly different title and I would provide my photos, listing descriptions, etc for their use so setting up their new store would be fairly easy. I would also be happy to set up a link on my old Etsy store so that it redirected customers to the new owners shop. I think with a setup like this the new owner would be able to build a really nice business on Etsy just as I have been able to.

Hopefully this is enough detail to give a general idea of the scope and worth of my business. I have gotten great feedback and have lots of regular customers. Owning this business has been a wonderful experience so this has been a very difficult decision, however I have come to the belief that self-employment is just not a good choice for my family at this time. Rather than put the business on hold and store all the fixin's for 10-15 years until I am ready to go back to work, I have decided it will be better to close up shop for good and reassess what I want to do when the time comes. If I'm able to find a buyer who would be a good fit for this type and size of business I would be thrilled as I hate to see it just disappear and would love to have a continuing source for all of my regular customers.

If this sounds like the kind of thing you might be interested in (serious inquiry only please) PM me and I will be happy to provide more financial detail. I would rather not share too much info out of respect to any future business owners.

Thanks, and I can't wait to get more feedback from everyone!

Nicole