The Business We Took On
Coastal Pet Supply Co. was a growing direct-to-consumer pet supplies brand doing £780,000 a year in revenue, with £132,000 in EBITDA and a customer base that kept coming back. Revenue was up 16% year-on-year, margins were healthy, and pet products are a category with real staying power.
By most measures, it looked like a strong business. But once we looked at it the way a buyer would, the picture got more complicated.
The founder was still the one holding key supplier and customer relationships together. Meta Ads accounted for 87% of all traffic. Almost nothing about how the business ran was written down anywhere. And one product carried 71% of total revenue on its own.
None of that stopped the business from running day to day. It just meant a buyer wouldn't pay what the underlying business deserved. Growing revenue wasn't the real opportunity here, making the business less dependent, less concentrated, and easier to hand over was.
What We Found
The founder was still the glue holding it together. Supplier relationships, customer relationships, most of the important connective tissue of the business ran through one person. If the founder stepped away, it wasn't clear the business would keep running the same way. Impact: –9 points on the Exit Readiness Score.
87% of traffic came from Meta Ads. Meta was working, but a single platform carrying that much weight is a liability the moment ad costs rise, policies shift, or the algorithm changes. Buyers pay more for acquisition engines that don't live or die by one channel. Impact: –7 points.
Nothing about the business was documented. No SOPs, no written processes, no way for a new owner to understand how things actually got done without asking the founder directly. That knowledge living only in one person's head is exactly what makes a transition risky. Impact: –5 points.
One product made up 71% of revenue. A strong hero product is a good problem to have, until it's carrying almost the entire business. If demand shifted or a competitor moved in, most of the company's revenue was exposed at once. Impact: –4 points.
Together, these four issues were the difference between a business worth £382,800 and one worth £567,600, a gap of £184,800 that had nothing to do with how much the business was selling and everything to do with how much risk a buyer would see in it.
What We Did
We moved key relationships and knowledge off the founder. Supplier and customer relationships got documented and handed off where possible, shifting the business from founder-dependent toward something closer to system-dependent.
We built acquisition channels beyond Meta. Rather than walking away from what was working, we added to it, giving the business a more resilient customer acquisition setup that didn't collapse if one platform had a bad month.
We documented how the business actually ran. Built out the SOPs and processes that had only ever existed in the founder's head, so a new owner could actually understand and operate the business without a steep learning curve.
We reduced how much the business leaned on one product. The hero SKU stayed a strength, it just stopped being the only thing keeping the business afloat, as the product line diversified around it.
The Result
Coastal Pet Supply Co.'s Exit Readiness Score moved from 51 to 79, from a Developing Asset to an Attractive one. The business's estimated value climbed from £382,800 toward the £567,600 we'd identified as achievable, and when it went to market, it sold for £492,800, closing the large majority of the £184,800 gap flagged at the start.
The revenue didn't need to double for that to happen. The business just needed to look a lot less risky to whoever was going to buy it.
What This Confirmed
Founder involvement isn't automatically a strength. It can feel like commitment from the inside. From a buyer's side, it reads as risk sitting in one place, and the less the business depends on that one person, the more attractive it becomes.
Diversifying how you acquire customers is part of the exit strategy, not separate from it. A buyer pays more for revenue that isn't tied to one platform's mood.
Writing things down turns knowledge into an asset. Anything that only lives in someone's head leaves with them. Anything documented stays with the business, and that's a large part of what makes a company transferable.
Conclusion
Coastal Pet Supply Co. already had what most businesses want, healthy margins, growing revenue, loyal customers, real room to grow. What it didn't have yet was a structure a buyer could trust.
The £184,800 gap was never about making the business bigger. It was about making it safer to own. Reducing founder dependency, spreading out customer acquisition, documenting how things worked, and pulling revenue away from a single product turned a business buyers would've hesitated over into one they were willing to pay £492,800 for.
That's the actual work. We find what's holding a business back, put a number on it, and close the gap before a buyer ever gets the chance to use it against the price.