Selling your brand? Start preparing 12 months out

Most owners start thinking about selling when they’re tired. The ones who get the best price usually started getting ready a year before anyone asked.

We look at a lot of brands, and the pattern is hard to miss. Buyers pay for certainty. Every question they can’t get a straight answer to turns into a lower offer, a longer list of conditions, or a deal that quietly goes cold. Twelve months is roughly how long it takes to clear most of those questions up.

Twelve months out: get your numbers clean

A buyer’s first real question is always some version of: how much does this business actually make? If the answer takes a week and three spreadsheets, you’ve already lost ground.

Get monthly management accounts that reconcile to the bank. Separate personal spending from the business. Know your true margin on each product and each channel after ad spend, returns, platform fees and delivery, not just the headline figure on your Shopify dashboard.

Nine months out: make yourself less essential

If the business stops when you go on holiday, a buyer isn’t buying a company. They’re buying a job, and they’ll price it that way.

Write down how things actually get done: reordering stock, briefing creators, handling refunds, launching products. Make sure suppliers deal with more than one person. Hand someone else the day-to-day, even if it feels slower at first. A business that runs smoothly without you is worth noticeably more than one that doesn’t.

Six months out: sort the paperwork

This is the dull part, and it’s where deals most often stall.

Check that your trademarks are registered to the company, not to you personally. Make sure the company owns its domain, its store and its ad, TikTok and Amazon accounts. Put supplier and manufacturer agreements in writing, and chase anything that’s been running on a handshake for years.

Three months out: tell the story with data

By now you should be able to show what keeps customers coming back. How many reorder within a year? What does it cost to win a customer, channel by channel? Which products bring people in, and which ones keep them?

Pull it into a short, honest pack, and include the weak spots. Buyers find them anyway, and it’s far better that they hear about them from you.

Talk to buyers before you’re ready

Speaking to a buyer early doesn’t commit you to anything. A good one will tell you what they’d need to see, and that can shape your next twelve months far better than guesswork. It’s a conversation we’re always happy to have, whether a sale is one year away or five.