Website Closers® presents an eCommerce Brand with a treasure trove of Intellectual Property protecting its Production Cookware product line. The company’s 70+ proprietary Kitchenware Products cannot be purchased through any other company and the sale mix is between Direct-to-Consumer (Branded Website) and Business-to-Business (Wholesale to Retailers).
With a decade of experience developing attractive, high-quality products from suppliers around the Globe (including the U.S.), the company enjoys 40% YOY growth rates and increasingly global sales. Proof positive that the products are extremely unique, of the utmost quality, and long lasting given the company’s multi-century warranty it provides as assurance to its customers that it backs the products 100%.
The word has spread across the world about the brand’s specialized Production-Level Kitchenware, Cookware, and Knives, designed and manufactured solely for this company, sold under its brand name, and backed by 19 patents. Vibrant sales flow from the U.S., UK, Japan, and South Korea, among many other nations. While 70% of the company’s sales are DTC, a fast-rising percentage is now B2B, where the company has profitable deals with 130+ top retailers, including the country’s largest department store chain.
[Note: a DTC/B2B sales channel mix is often sought after by our clients given the ability to scale via multiple channels, the reduction in risk from being solely sold in one channel, and the enormous opportunity that B2B sales offers to an established brand like this one that has been in business for 10 years.]
The company is looking to introduce a new range of high-quality kitchen knives available at competitive pricing and has the advantage of a backlog of innovative products that are now in development for future launches. Those SKUs are now in R&D and can be placed into production by the new owner, which provides another immediate scale opportunity.
This business represents a clear opportunity for a U.S. Buyer to acquire this company and then scale it quickly by expediting new product launches, expanding sales internationally, and targeting its marketing to a much larger wholesale expansion.
Business Broker Takeaway
We are excited about this business for 3 important reasons:
1. Scale Opportunities. Increasing both the number of products this brand offers and its digital marketing could easily prompt sales to skyrocket. While the company now enjoys increased sales in the U.S., there are immense scale opportunities for investing more in online advertising within the states. The company could also target new distributors in countries such as Germany, Scandinavia, Mexico, and Canada, and quickly increase the rate of new product launches. With the company’s faithful customer base, this would be a terrific opportunity for upsells and cross-sells.
2. Experienced Team in Place. The company has an experienced team in place to handle daily operations, with clearly defined goals and roles for each one. That includes fulltime managers of operations and administration, and part-time managers of sales and marketing, along with a part-time marketing assistant, customer service lead, and logistics assistant. This highly motivated team is employed in their main office, and the company also has a part-time agent in the U.S. All tasks, for now, are handled in-house, including inventory management, and a contracted factory team handles fulfillment. The company could also bring on new employees in the marketing department and grow a new team in the U.S.
3. Expert at Crowdfunding. Over the past decade, the company has become an expert at building campaigns to raise revenue through crowdfunding and then promoting them online. These campaigns have raised additional capital for promoting website preorders, launching new products, and covering all tooling. Crowdfunding has become a creative and popular way for businesses to fund a venture by raising money from people via online crowdfunding platforms, and this company knows how to leverage vast networks of people through social media to attract investors.
Operations and Marketing
All products are manufactured for this company, based on its designs, and sold under its brand name. The company maintains at least $200,000 worth of inventory at all times to keep up with demand. The company is now shipping 25+ orders a day, which rises to 100+ orders a day during peak times. New inventory orders are placed multiple times per year as sales continue to increase globally.
One of the company’s key strengths has been its skill at boosting customer engagement. The company launched a Facebook Lovers Group for its website that now enjoys 15,000+ members and continues growing, while the company’s Facebook page has 51,000+ followers.
Add to that an additional 36,000+ followers on Instagram and an email database of 40,000+ subscribers as additional marketing tools.
The company has built up this loyal community based around the integrity of its products and of the business itself and in the company’s continued ability to design and launch creative new products that customers are eager to buy.
Sales now remain steady throughout the year and ramp up significantly during the holidays. There is little guesswork that goes into designing these products, since the founder has a keen sense of what customers are looking for and how to provide SKUs they can’t find elsewhere.
In addition to social media and email marketing, the company runs PPC ad campaigns on Google and works extensively with influencers and loyalty programs to boost sales and build brand recognition. These influencers have become key in driving word-of-mouth advertising for the company and boosting online traffic to its website. The company now averages a hefty 35,880+ unique monthly visits to its website.
This is an enormously profitable industry. The global cookware market was valued at $30.59 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow by 7.3% through 2030, with cookware products in very high demand in both the commercial and residential sectors. While most of this company’s revenue comes from Cookware, new categories of knives and kitchen tools are gaining traction among the company’s loyal customer base.
Since kitchenware remains an evergreen vertical that continues to drive high profits, this company’s advancements in creating appealing new products that competitors don’t offer have given this brand a major advantage.
The fact that B2B sales are starting to rival the company’s DTC profits and that the company is making a successful global expansion gives the new owner a potent online store to grow and expand.
