How Hahnbeck is Different
People think that all investment banks are the same. They’re not.
Here’s how we’re different.
No Pretending
We only work with businesses we have confidence in. In fact, we turn away most businesses who approach us.
If we’re keen to work with you, your brand is one of the best. And we know that we can help you to sell for much more than you could on your own.
Most brokers take on every business who approaches them: their high upfront fees make this profitable, regardless of whether or not they really believe they can sell the business. We work in the opposite way.
Transparency
We don’t run our business based on kickbacks.
This is not to say that other investment banks do. But many other operators in e-commerce do this. Paid referrals are out of control in e-commerce. People will refer you to services you don’t even need, just for the referral fee. Others will refer you to services you do need, but not to the best provider, just to the one who pays them the most.
Investment banks sometimes work together and share commissions: when we do this, we’ll tell you. But we don’t make introductions purely for the referral fee. If we recommend a product, service or person to you it’s a genuine recommendation.
Results
Our results are exceptional. But besides achieving record multiples, we measure our results by the satisfaction of our clients.
Many of them have written testimonials for us, or reviews on public forums like Google.
It is easy to post impressive deal tombstones or to claim to have completed hundreds of deals, like M&A firms often do. But without real client testimonials, questions can be raised about how well the M&A firm actually performed. With Hahnbeck you know our results are real.
Network
Our network in the consumer sector is extensive.
We have senior level contacts at the top consumer PE firms and strategics, in addition to deep connections to the aggregators, who we have worked closely with since their founding.
However, we are not too close to the buyers. We don’t run co-marketing webinars and campaigns with aggregators, for example (this allows the buyers to completely control the discourse). We know them well. But they don’t owe us anything. This is important.
We work closely with, and are recommended by, the best legal and accountancy firms in consumer M&A, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Proactive Approach
We don’t “list” businesses for sale. We don’t do “listings”.
We also don’t rely on just a mailing list, simply emailing each “listing” to them. Nor do we operate a self-service marketplace. This “classified ad” approach might work with tiny businesses*, where the ultimate buyer is likely to be an individual. But for our clients, individuals are always outbid by serious buyers, i.e. companies.
Our approach is not passive, it’s proactive. We identify the investment firms and companies most likely to acquire the business, and we pitch them. This requires a lot of work, particularly with strategics, but it is worth it to get our clients into meetings with the leaders in their respective industries.
* Actually the “listing” model doesn’t really work – when very small (<$500k sales) businesses are brought to market 90% of them do not sell. This is how this model operates. Hundreds of listings, tens of sales.
Specialists
We are consumer sector specialists. We work with:
Online-first retail brands (whether wholly DTC, Amazon or a combination)
Multichannel consumer brands
Technology & services for e-commerce, for example:
E-com SAAS & technology
E-com service providers
Real Insight
We take a balanced, comprehensive view of the entire market.
As sell-side advisors our job is to represent the sellers in this market, while understanding the buyers (all of them, not just the aggregators), in depth.
We have deep insight into this sector, including understanding the aggregators in great detail (since their founding days), their investors and all of the buyers in this ecosystem, from PE firms to strategics.
Our insights into the e-commerce M&A market are highly regarded, cited in publications from TechCrunch to the Financial Times.
When new investors are interested in this sector, from PE firms to hedge funds, they ask Hahnbeck for insight.
Actions Not Words
We are not full of hyperbole.
We don’t come out with pronouncements about what we are going to do. There is enough marketing nonsense in this sector already.
We talk about what we’ve actually done.
We also deliberately avoid jargon. Both in writing and in person, we seek to make concepts easier to understand. Many firms pepper their language with investment banking buzzwords that sound impressive. We don’t do this.
Trusted
We are trusted by serious consumer brands and 9-figure Amazon sellers.
They use Hahnbeck because of our expertise, the individual care & attention we provide, and because they know we will protect their interests throughout the process.
Tying all of this together are two themes: expertise and care. Combining the right people, with the right expertise, with an approach in which we care so much about each client that we treat the business as if it was our own: this is what consistently generates outstanding results.
At Hahnbeck we only hire people who are committed to this ethos. Our team members are carefully chosen for their integrity as much as their investment banking & capital markets experience. Hailing from Wall Street and City of London firms, individual Hahnbeck executives have closed over $2Bn in transactions and have several decades of combined experience.
When we say we care, we’re really talking about execution. It’s easy in M&A to do an “OK” job – speak to some acquirers we know, email out the deal to an email list, see what comes back, find the best offer, and let the lawyers handle the rest. It’s much harder to do everything well: to really understand the business and its growth levers to perfect the pitch; to optimise the accounts (often a huge task in itself); to approach the whole market; to be persistent in chasing down potential acquirers; to truly negotiate the best deal and advise on the factors that are not obvious; to work proactively through due diligence and protect our clients’ interests, even in terms that have no bearing on our commission. This is the secret. Going the extra mile means that the acquirer with the best fit is found and engaged, instead of being missed. It means that the offers are stronger. It means that the deal is more likely to actually close.
Another term for care is effort. We commit our full effort to each of the clients we take on, and it shows in our results.
Expertise | Care
Our Results
We consistently achieve above-market results for our clients.
The highest multiple on a deal we’ve closed in the last 12 months for a small (<$10m) e-commerce business was 8.76x EBITDA in cash at closing (more than 10x EBITDA at closing in EV terms), but this is just one example.
You can learn more about our results, or read testimonials from our clients.
Our Experience
The “brokers” in the e-commerce sector who work with small clients and run marketplaces or listings will focus on the number of deals they’ve done. It’s easy to do dozens or even hundreds of small deals when you operate with a self-service model like this.
We don’t work with hundreds of clients at a time. We selectively work with a few clients at a time. They tend to be larger (our largest clients have >$100m in sales) although we work with clients as small as $500k in EBITDA. But our clients share one thing in common: we know that we will be able to sell their businesses for much more than they could on their own. We only take on clients where we can bring this value to the table.
Here are some highlights of the more difficult things we’ve achieved in the last 2 years:
We’ve sold e-commerce businesses to strategic buyers
We’ve sold brands in difficult categories such as mobile phone accessories
We’ve sold resellers
We’ve sold brands where brokers had failed to find a buyer
We’ve sold brands where the owners had been to market on their own, approaching >40 buyers without success
We’ve found buyers for a brand with >100,000 SKUs (* deal still in progress)
We’ve turned a “no” into a “yes”, several times, through our relationships and deep market knowledge
We’ve worked with the aggregators since they were founded, bringing many of them their first ever deals, or their first European deals. We’ve introduced aggregators to investors and lenders. We know the founders and senior team at many of these firms. We’ve brought them their largest acquisition opportunities. To say we work closely with the aggregators is an understatement. But these are not the only buyers. Our extensive network of senior contacts at PE firms and strategics in the consumer sector is equally important.
Battle Scars
We also have enough experience to know what causes deals not to close. We’ve seen it all and we have the battle scars to prove it. We proactively help our clients to see risks ahead of time, and take measures to prevent them. We always work as part of a team: working with our clients, their legal and accounting advisors to navigate through due diligence, avoiding problems and finding solutions where necessary. Experience is critical here.
Transparent Pricing
No one should choose an advisor based on price. But our commitment to transparent pricing enables us to make this topic a no-brainer. Our 5% commission is simple, fair and lower than our clients expect.
By removing price as an issue, we are able to choose the clients we work with. We put a great deal of effort and work into each and every one of our clients, so this is important to us.
Global Reach
We work with clients all over the world, from our global head office in London and our North American head office in Vancouver. Serious buyers of e-commerce businesses are spread across the United States, Canada, the UK, Europe and beyond. So it is important that your advisors can cover all of these time zones, in order to be able to work closely with buyers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Start With A Conversation
If you have an outstanding consumer brand or your firm provides leading technology / services in the e-commerce sector, please get in touch. If you’re a fit for our model, then engaging Hahnbeck will be the best move you can make.
In the first instance please reach out to info@hahnbeck.com for a confidential discussion.