The target is a High Growth, Super Exciting eCommerce & B2B Retailer that mixes Online Retail Sales on Amazon.com (FBA & FBM) along with B2B Wholesale for a large line of Gluten & Nut Free Dry Packaged Ingredients, all while performing its own co-packing in-house. The eCommerce side of the house sells an array of Healthy, Gluten Free and Nut Free Powdered Ingredients for the home baker in starter and bulk package sizes. The B2B side sells Gluten Free Fresh Baked Products wholesale to Restaurants, Food Service and Natural Food Grocery Stores.
While eCommerce is the company’s current driver of sales and has a massive amount of expansion potential (on and off line), the B2B side also represents a multitude of options because more and more people are converting to Gluten & Nut Free in the products they consume, so it is becoming ever more popular in grocery stores and restaurants. The business has been in operation for 10 years and has an attractive 27% Repeat Customer profile. All Raw Ingredients are sourced from US based Distributors in conjunction with overseas manufacturers and all products are co-packed 100% in-house.
The company operates under 3 well known brands in this space with tens of thousands of reviews, which provides proof of concept and proves its “sticky factor” associated with customer retention. The company uses Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) for most of its online delivery of goods, which manages their pick, pack, shipping and storage and allows them to deliver to consumers via 1 and 2 day shipping, via Amazon Prime. To manage storage and contamination concerns, all storage and shipping is handled in-house.
This business is optimized for profitability, showing an amazing 26% Net Margins, and an ability to control the cost of goods better due to packing all goods in-house. The company is rare in that it has invested in employees to ensure stability through scale, running between 15-25 part time production employees at any given time.
While the business is rootted in appealing to the gluten or nut free customer, the essence of the company’s current sales are focused on all home bakers who use ingredients that are naturally gluten and nut free. So, they enter into markets that include keto and paleo diets requiring protein and eggs, the meal prepping community for those who want to keep their kitchen cabinets full with dry ingredients and home bakers.
A bit of background on the gluten free diet: The global gluten-free products market size was estimated at USD 21.61 billion in 2019 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.2% during the forecast period of 2020 to 2027. Gluten-free diets are essential for people with gluten allergies and celiac disease, a condition which causes inflammation in small intestines. Gluten-free food helps improve cholesterol levels, digestive systems, and increases energy levels, all things people are even more interested in controlling recently. Gluten-free food products exclude the protein “gluten”, which is found in grains such as wheat, barley, and rye. Additionally, cross contamination of gluten grains can be a risk to a gluten free diet, this is why this company’s facility is 100% gluten free including employee lunches.
Even though the company has been in business for 10 years, it has only scratched the surface of scale. Since only a small portion of overall sales are on the B2B side of the house, and given that most of the company’s online sales occur on Amazon.com, the brands can be scaled in a multitude of ways with the right partners in place, including through expansion into retail shelves, expansion into other online marketplaces, expansion Internationally using the power of Amazon FBA and expansion through the development of traffic to the company’s website. Company ownership is willing to stay involved post-closing, if desired by the new owner, and in fact prefers it. But the new owner needs to have the right background and experience to help take this business to the next level, which seems almost easy given the current trajectory of the company.
