Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - How Much Is a Hurricane Shutter Company REALLY Worth?

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

A storm-ready shutter business with $1.3M in profit and a million-dollar backlog gets picked apart for pricing, growth potential, and tricky deal terms.Business Listing – https://www.bizbuysell.com/business-opportunity/north-carolina-hurricane-shutter-business/2298331/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.💰 Sponsored by:Go High Level – The all-in-one sales and marketing platform built for agencies and entrepreneurs. Automate, manage, and grow your business at https://www.gohighlevel.comAcquisition Lab – Your fast-track to business ownership. Get hands-on support, world-class resources, and join a top-tier community of acquisition entrepreneurs. Schedule your free consultation at https://www.acquisitionlab.com and mention Acquisitions Anonymous!This episode dives into a North Carolina-based hurricane shutter company with $5M in annual revenue and $1.3M in EBITDA, asking $6.58M. The company serves coastal and inland regions, installs custom storm and security shutters, and has over $1M in work-in-progress (WIP)—not included in the sale.Key Highlights:- Asking Price: $6.585M | EBITDA: $1.29M | SDE: $1.37M- $1M+ in WIP (not included in sale), seller wants separate compensation- 17 employees, showroom and inventory space included- Niche market fueled by climate trends and hurricane severity- Potential warranty and liability tail; diligence needed on manufacturer agreementsSubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and welcome back to another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. This is the internet's number one podcast on buying, selling, and operating small businesses. I am one of your hosts, Bill D'Alessandro, and I am here with Mills Snell today, and we have a really cool deal. This one I wanted to buy as soon as I heard about it. This business does roll up, roll down hurricane shutters on the North Carolina coast. So imagine, like, the things that protect your windows from a hurricane, you really roll down as the storm is rolling in. This business is 20 plus years old. It's got $1.3 million of EBITDA. A lot to like about this one. I struggle to poke very many holes in it at all.

So it's not often that we really love one. And Mills and I both really like this one. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. Big thanks to High Level for sponsoring this video and helping us pay for our editors. High Level is the all-in-one CRM that handles your emails, text, funnels, and more all in one place. Think of it like the Swiss Army Night for Small Businesses, and you can try it for free for 30 days at gohighlevel.com slash Michael Gurdley. All right, just me and Mills today.

I love these ones. You're holding down the fort, man. Hold him down the fort. And Mills is in his conspiracy theory. layer. If you're watching on YouTube, you can see there's a whole bunch of strings and blueprints of buildings. He's either going to rob one of them or he's plotting the murder of the president or something. I'm not sure. It's the ultimate heist is what it is. No, it's just work. Thankfully, it's a lot of work that we have to get done. It's roofing diagrams and plants.

But check it out on YouTube. He does look like a conspiracy theorist. I need to get yarn to tie between all the different jobs. You do. You do. Well, you somehow found time between in re-roofing all of South Carolina to bring a deal today also. This one really piqued my interest, Bill. It's in North Carolina. I love it. I'm excited about this because I've never looked at a business like this before, but I don't know.

There's something about it really caught my eye. So this, I'll read it. It's on Biz by Sell, future aspiring sponsor for the podcast. It's a North Carolina hurricane shutter business. And it says they're asking 6.5. $6,585,000. The cash flow, they say, is SDE, seller discretionary earnings of $1,377,367. They say that they do that $1.3 million of SDE on just over $5 million in revenue. And they do break out EBITDA here of like $1.29 million. So there's about a $75,000 difference between EBITDA and SDE, which I'm guessing is just owners. You know, maybe it's base comp or maybe it's just like perks and discretionary spending.

The business has been around since 2003 also, so 22 years old. It says this North Carolina hurricane shutter business sells and installs various types of storm and security shutters and screens to homes and businesses from the outer banks to Myrtle Beach and to the mountains of North Carolina. The business is well established with almost 20 years of experience and has installed over 30, miles. I love this. This is like that's such anecdotal. It doesn't mean anything, but it has installed over 30 miles of end-to-end roll shutters during this time.

They are known in the area for their top of the line quality products and exceptional customer service. The business, get this, this is what, I was like, this is amazing. The business has over a million dollars worth of work in progress, which is not included in the sale price for the business.

So they have like a whip, a work in progress schedule. These are jobs that they're actively on. It's a million of the $5 million in annual revenue. And they say that the seller wants a pro-rated share due to them at the time of closing. The business is unique with their approach to customer service work ethic and sales. Their real estate is leased. They don't say anything about the building or the lease.

They have $114,750 of FF&E, furniture, fixture, and equipment. and it is included in the asking price, 17 employees, and they say their location is ideally situated on the main street with excellent visibility. I would think this is not a, not like a retail-type-focused business, but maybe it matters. They include a showroom and a storage area for inventory and equipment, you know, competition. They don't really miss lists all that much like it's a referral-driven business and, you know, kind of history of repeat work. Let's see, they've expanded their territory, which is kind of, it seems like the business has been driven by more storms, right? And larger storms and more severe storms. They talk about the possibility of expanding to a second or third location due to the increase of new construction and home sales that are being brought to the area.

Support and training is negotiable. They're selling because of retirement. And then there is an attachment here. So I pulled it up on another screen. I'll share it. it's a PDF and it's just like a one-page teaser. And it repeats.

That's a real teaser. I like this. So this is by benchmark business group, BBG, and R Davis is the listing agent. It looks like it's pretty much all the same info, except we do have some historical financials here. So the business has really been around $4.8 to $5 million. And in the eight months of 2025, So this is very fresh.

It looks like they either are in decline or they maybe have a seasonal business. It's got to be seasonal, Mills. Everybody puts these in at the end of summer. Yeah. They've only done $2.4 million in the first eight months of 2025, which would put their run rate at like $3.8, you know. It says the selling price is $6 million. So I think that's a different selling.

No, that's right. $6.585. It's the same sale. price. It's 5x, 5x net owner benefit, what they say here. Yeah. Okay, Bill. I mean, are you, are you buying this thing? Are you moving to the coast of Florida? Coast of Florida, coast of North Carolina. Heck yeah, I'm buying this thing. This is awesome. I love this. So, uh, I know a little bit about this because we, the, we have a beach house in South Carolina and the windows are very old. And so we need to replace them. And so we had to look at these roll down shutters. So what this is is like,

imagine metal roll up, like almost like bank vault shutters or like, you know, at the mall and they like pull it down and close the storefront. It's like that. But in coastal areas, you need to put, you need to protect the windows on the ocean side of your house because if you're not there and something goes through the window, it can total the home. Yeah. Because of all the moisture and the wind and everything. And then you've got mold and you got water damage and everything. So these are really important to protect your house if you're in a coastal area from hurricanes. And we looked at it and we actually ended up putting in hurricane-proof glass instead of these things. So the ratings on these are insane.

These windows can withstand a bowling ball at 100 miles an hour. Which is a real concern, you know, on the coast sometimes. Yeah. So that is what they're rated for, a bowling ball at over 100 miles an hour. And I think the glass is a little bit more expensive, but these roll-down shutters are super, super common. But I would imagine your kind of primary alternative here is the hurricane glass. Because what I see people do anytime a hurricane's coming on the coast, like, if you don't have these, you're literally out there with like a ladder and you're trying to like hold up a sheet of plywood and screw it to your house. That's right. Literally board up the windows. Yes. And we used like we've done that. So for 25 years, we watch the weather. And when a hurricane is coming, we get in the car from Charlotte. We drive south on like 24 hours of notice and you board off the house. Yeah. It's just what you have to do. But now they have these that are all internet connected. So you just press a button on your phone. And it's like Alcatraz. You know, and it just goes down. It becomes the safe room. Exactly. So these are very, very cool things. And they're, you know, with. hurricanes getting worse and worse, you know, with global warming and everything. Like,

this is a growing market. Um, I really like this business. So, I mean, margin wise, you're, you know, you think about it like, it's a specialty contractor. Kind of like if you had somebody like replacing gutters or something on your house or maybe doing like niche concrete work or like high and hardscaping or like building an outdoor kitchen. Like in my mind, it's not, you know, it's not the low lowest of the low margin, and it's probably not like incredibly high gross margin because they're having to buy the shutter hardware, which my guess is they don't stock like a ton of this in their inventory. They don't mention inventory. It's going to be all custom, right? Because it's got to fit your window exactly. And everything, yes. And I imagine, right, there's probably more than one person

manufacturing these shutters. And they come in different colors. They come in different wits. They probably come in different, like, you know, like you said, the glass, different grades and ratings and performance standards. And so, you know, you call them out to the house. They send an estimator out to do a takeoff, measure all the windows. And then I, you know, be curious, like, how tech enabled they are as a 20 plus year old business. A lot of these home service contractors have gotten so good at, like, doing takeoffs on site. And with an iPad sitting in, you know, the home and like, there's like point of sale. you can make the decision right there. Yeah.

Contract and get financing. A lot of them have gotten to the point where there's like turnkey financing on site. I would be really- Well, Mills, I would tell you if they're not doing that, this is a big opportunity for this business. Yes, totally. All right. So the margins are good. What about this quirky seller wants to be paid for the work in progress?

It's not included in the sale. You basically have to start day one with your own sales pipeline. Well, I don't necessarily think it's that. I don't think he wants to get paid for all the jobs he's got in probably. He's not saying he wants to keep his AR. I think what he's saying is that he's basically got inventory in the field. I think what he's saying is he's probably, because these are all custom, right, that he's probably working on jobs or he's ordered shutters for jobs or, you know, whatever.

And he's got cash in it. And he wants to make sure he gets some of that cash out, which is obviously fair, right? And this business doesn't really have true inventory. but I think that's what he's saying that he's got cost into jobs that are not done and he wants to recover some of that. I mean, we, so like that would normally be encompassed in a networking capital calculation anyways, but because this is a like kind of smaller business, a little bit closer to Main Street, they even say they're located on Main Street. I think the seller is trying to hit at that.

When I bought a construction business, I had to deal with this because especially in construction, versus like if, you know, in e-commerce, right, you've got the inventory and you're getting paid for it and count it and value it and say exactly what's worth. But in construction, we have usually, and like I'm going to use this company as an example because it probably, they probably got a deposit, right? They got maybe 35 to 40 percent up front when you sign the contract so that they could order the materials because they're custom materials to make sure that they don't get hosed and left, you know, left holding all this stuff they can't use. But they're not, that might cover, might cover the actual cost of the inventory if they're doing it right. But in all likelihood, right, they've got other sunk cost in, you know, in these jobs. And they could be halfway done installing a house at the time of closing. And it takes another week to finish.

And they're like, he's trying to grasp, you know, but I would really want to hash this out early with him of what do you want out of these whip? Because we have a whip schedule that are, you know, we have to give to the IRS. every year of what's all our work in progress and how much have we built and are we over or under billing relative to progress but we have longer duration jobs than this so i would really want to double click on this with the seller and figure out are you wanting to collect all the revenue or you just wanting to recoup your sunk costs or you wanting you know maybe the it's like some of the profit out of the job and like profit sharing it's not it's not super clear but you would hope for the best but i don't on. Something about it is just telling me,

it could get weird fast. Well, let me ask you this, Mills, like in practice. Let's say you got something, I'll just use round numbers. You got a $20,000 job and he's got, he's basically half done and he's got $5,000 of cost in it. You know, does

he want $5,000 back? Does he want, hey, I'm half done, so I want $10,000, which is half of the ticket price of the job. So like, I want my cost back plus the margin on my cost? Or does he try to collect the whole job? Like, what is the fair way to do this? I mean, the fairest way to do it, it really ultimately depends on his AR and his AP. So what, like, the egregious example is, I want to be

paid back the cost I have in the job, but I have a payable for this material and I haven't actually paid the supplier yet and you're going to foot the bill. You know, like, you see these kind of weird things emerge where sellers a lot of times are like, well, that's, that's my AR, that's my money, you know. And it's like, okay, that's fine, but are you keeping the payables, too? You know, now you're back to kind of the classic networking capital, right, is the blood of the business, et cetera. Yes. So in this case, you know, the benefit, I think, in this whole calculation is the duration of these jobs is probably two to three weeks max. I would now, well, maybe they might have to order these shutters.

Totally. I'm talking about on site, for sure. So let's say you're on site. I don't think there's that difficult of a calculation to say, hey, like, you're functionally going to be done with this job by the time of closing. But in any construction business like this, you're like, where do you draw the line in the sand and go, these are your jobs and these are mine? And the one nice thing about this on the residential side that is more difficult on the commercial side is we have contracts that almost all of them are with very sophisticated, you know,

contract writers who don't want assignment of contracts. And so you've got to figure out how do I navigate this. And a lot of those contracts have change of control provisions to say not just are you assigning the contract to a new LLC, but is there a change of control in the LLC that we have this contract with and we deserve to be notified? I mean, there's a whole can of worms, especially with commercial contracts. Well, especially because they're like, hey, who's finishing the job that is started here? Yeah. Residential homeowners probably don't care. They don't care. I would assume your counterparty here is all, your customers are all residential. This doesn't strike me something, and I don't know the building codes now in North Carolina, but I would wonder,

I'm guessing this is all kind of aftermarket, like you're going to put in existing. It looks like you could all be retrofitted. And my, you know, just like window people, you know, there's, there's windows with a nail fin on them that are for new construction and there's windows that are for, you know, retro and you're taking out the old window and putting in a new one. You're not removing all the siding around the window. You've got to be able to do it in the existing, you know, hole in the building envelope. I looked at a business one time bill that did like almost like DOD level shades like this. They were like blast shades and blasts.

Oh, wow. And it was really funny because, you know, you get to a point in due diligence with any kind of commercial construction or like commercial service business where you want to see like a representative sample of like, do you have customer concentration? Do you have like really significant single job, you know, concentration? You had a great year because you got like a disproportionately large job. So we were at that point in due diligence. We were like, okay, we need to see like customer list and like some kind of job history. And they're like absolutely not. We can't share any of that info.

But it was because they were doing stuff like at the FBI office in New York and like the White House. Like they had blast shutters. They were like, we can't say it. But they functionally said it. Like we have blast shutters on the White House. So if an explosion goes off outside, the windows close instantaneously. Yeah, yeah. And I'll never forget, like, just how, like, awkward of a moment it was in due diligence where it's like, I think we're talking. Yeah, okay, we're talking about the same. Are we talking about the president? Yes, we're talking about the president. Yeah. Wow. All that to say, I think there is probably a commercial application. You think about every retail storefront in a beach town that has a ton of glass. It may be cost prohibitive for them to do something like this, you know, versus some of these higher-end homes. But there's got to be. even if it's a small potential, there's got to be a potential to sell into that market.

That's true. I wonder, I mean, obviously, this business has been around for what? We said 20 years. So I wonder if they've prosecuted any commercial business at all or if they just have a great name in residential. And what's also interesting is, you know, we mentioned sort of the run right financials. I do think this is probably seasonal. I bet a lot of people kind of put this in over the winter or they get hit with hurricanes. and then they're, oh, crap, we have damage, and then they're going to put it in. So, like, this is like one of those classic just every hurricane season, like, you get busy. So it's, I think it's definitely going to be lumpy, you know, for sure. You're going to have crazy weeks and months and then lulls, but it's kind of evergreen.

The hurricanes just keep on coming. Yeah. And you think, I mean, you know, this is probably a middle age owner, maybe not even an older owner, but somebody with a ton of new energy and just kind of umph, you can imagine, you could blast, you know, this could be like a postcard mailer like bonanza where you are hitting all of these coastal towns in like South Carolina and up into North Carolina and marketing these. I just think you could probably drive a ton of business. And maybe there's a lot of competition, but I've never seen or heard of one of these

businesses before. And it's because I don't live in a coastal town, but I can't imagine that they get blitz. Like the Tam just has to be so kind of quirky that they're- I would think so. And also the market is so big. I mean, you're talking like from northern North Carolina to Florida. I mean, the whole southeastern coast. You know, it sounds like these guys are based in North Carolina. It's got to be an outer banks type company, right?

And there's all up and down the outer banks. I mean, just tons and tons of houses and commercial business. is that you extend down into South Carolina, I mean, Georgia, like, all this is Hurricane Alley, like all the time. I would think that if a young person or younger person with some hustle on the marketing side could do really, really well. I don't know, maybe even door to door. I mean, you need to do it in the summer when people are actually there.

I would also imagine, you know, like scraping property tax records, you know, trying to figure out who owns it, trying to send the postcards to them. You know, there's a whole, you know, value equation. I also wonder if you get a discount on your insurance, if you have these. That's a great point. I would feel sure that there's a component of that. And I mean, you could go to, you could, I mean, you know, every beach town has like the one de facto property management, like there was, you know, resort rental management people. You go to those people in every town and just say, we'll give you a referral bonus.

I had somebody from a restoration company drop off something this week. It was a QR code and like a one page thing and a magnet, $750 if you refer a remediation job to them, which tells you about what their average order value is. It's many multiples of that. You could totally do something like that with them and say, hey, you know, give us one job. We're going to win you over. We'll show you our customer service. We'll show you our ability to execute. My concern would be the performance of the work if you're used to doing it kind of within maybe an hour drive as you grow, the estimating becomes the bottleneck there. If somebody, a great, amazing job comes up in, you know, Hilton Head, South Carolina, that might be four hours away from your home base.

It's a ton of sunk cost and time to send an estimator four hours, you know, one way four hours back just to qualify leads. And that's where you got to figure out how does the footprint of this business grow as it scales. Are you ready to take a leap into business owners? but you don't know where to start? Well, look no further than Acquisition Lab, the premier resource for entrepreneurs seeking to buy their dream business. Founded by Harvard MBA, and acquisition expert, Walker Dibble, the Lab is your fast-track to success in the search diligence and acquisition process. With hands-on support, world-class resources, and a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, Acquisition Lab gives you the tools and confidence to navigate every step of the journey. And we're

proud to call Walker and Chelsea, the lab's director, longtime friends of the podcast. They're passionate about helping entrepreneurs like you take the next big step. So don't wait to make your business ownership dream of reality. Visit AcquisitionLab.com today to learn more and schedule your free consultation. And when you do, be sure to tell them the Acquisitions Anonymous podcast sent you. Yeah, I wonder if you could do some sort of self-estimation or remote estimation. If you could get within 10% of the cost of the job, it's probably worth booking the job. Yes, right?

Totally. And maybe you're like pre-qualifying people, you know, having them send you photos, you know, like counting the windows. There's probably like a really great tool for that in this world already. And then, yeah, you're kind of saying, hey, here's the range that we would be in. And then maybe you get on site and finalize the estimate, you know, before you go to contract. Yeah. I just, I love this business.

I think this is an awesome business. I do wonder, do you think there is any warranty or liability tail on this thing? Because they've installed, as they said, what, 30 miles? Roll up, you know, so warranty, tail, liability. How do you handle that? I think it would almost certainly be, and I'm not familiar with the specifics in North Carolina, like I am in South Carolina. But in South Carolina, at least you would have a workmanship warranty on the install that by state law is either a year or two years, depending on the scope of work, which just says, hey, if I installed it wrong, I've got to come back and fix it. But what you're more than likely doing is having the homeowner register their product with the OEM, the person who made this shutter. And you're saying, look, all this liability, you know, and the risk here is now the manufacturers.

And it's not mine after that 12 month period because they may have a 10 year warranty or something like that on impact resistance or that, you know, the chains inside won't break or something like that. But maybe that also brings up. maybe there's a service component to this where, you know, you've got repairs and maintenance and, you know, kind of upkeep on these. Well, I'm sure you have a hurricane and a bowling ball hits it at 100 miles an hour. You might need to fix it. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah. I do think, though, in this deal, there is going to be warranty, you know, liability, kind of a separate thing. I think liability can probably be solved with insurance. There is, which I would definitely want a diligence, understand, and have insurance in place, because your claims can get huge. you know, one of these fails, you're going to have, you could total a house with water damage. So I would really make sure my insurance was dialed.

But I could really see like a warranty escrow in a deal like this. You know, it's a, they do what, $6 million of work every year or something. Like you might need a million bucks in escrow that releases gradually over one or two years post-transaction. Yeah. You know, that pays any warranty claims. And a lot of times, you know, the mechanism on those. reps and warranties, like they'll structure it as like a tipping basket where it's like, look, for the first, you know, $50,000 worth of me having to go back and fix the seller's previous

work, I'm not going to nickel and not. I'm not going to stick my hand down and say I had to pay a crew to go fix it. But when I get to the $50,000, when the basket is full, you have to, you know, it tips and you have to reimburse me for everything. And that could be a way you mitigate it, but it doesn't stop the huge catastrophic risk of if you total the house. So, yeah, you may have to, may have to kind of quantify that and figure out some risk. Yeah, I think that's an insurance insurance thing. Yeah. Because, I mean, they have a huge installed base here.

And, you know, you have a catastrophic loss. The insurers are all over this thing. Yeah. So I would, I would really, and also, you know, the nice thing, though, is they have been in business for so long. They have been through catastrophic losses. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. could tell you probably the horror stories of we learned a little lesson, you know, back in like 2012 when we insult this thing the wrong way. We've never, you know, we never made that mistake since. Yep. What I also like about this business mills is it is quasi technical. Like, this is not like vanilla. You can't go to Lowe's and buy this. Right. And also like, you know, like any guy off the street can't set up like Mills's roll up windows. I mean, probably not that hard, but it's not like Mills is plumbing.

Yeah. You know, but it's also not a licensed trade. So it's not going to be super hard, I don't think, to staff it. Like you can probably hire guys in and train them up. Yeah. And you're not going to have the problem that all the HVAC tax are having and the plumbing and all the license trades. Absolutely.

Yeah, I think with 17 employees, you know, they don't mention like fleet and assets and stuff like that, but it's probably relatively light. and probably, I think, pretty manageable. Yeah, I like it a lot. We don't have Heather our, you know, our go-to expert on the financeability of this from BISO. But I think that Heather would say this is definitely in the sweet spot of SBA in terms of size. And from a profitability standpoint, it could probably service the amount of debt, you know, associated with the acquisition.

Yeah, well, so I would tell you maybe it's pushing it because they want five times. Ebit da. Mm-hmm. Right. And generally SBA kind of debt service coverage ratios, you know, some hand-waving here, generally if you're paying more than four times, they start to get a little stretched. And you're going to have to put in more equity. So, like, you're probably going to need a higher equity check on this thing.

If you're going to pay five times, I don't know if you're going to pay five times. You don't have to pay five times. Asking prices are made up. but if you're going to pay asking, you probably need a little bit of a larger equity check. Yeah. And I do know Heather sometimes complains about job work. But like I would say this feels different to me than like commercial construction.

Right. What do you think the average order value is on something like this bill? Like 10 to 20,000? That's what I was going to say, maybe 20 to 30. I mean, it depends on the size of the home. And it probably also depends on the grade of shutters that you choose. I mean, if you can choose like the ugly metal big ones that are probably garage door looking and they're cheap or like, you know, the svelte remote. Wi-Fi and label. Yeah. So I bet you can do $50,000 jobs. And, you know, like obviously every beach house, it's like the windows are situated around the view. Right. And so this is like most of these are probably not like standard residential windows. They're like picture windows that like, you know, give you this amazing view of the beach and stuff.

And so, yeah, I think the variability of cost could probably be pretty dramatic. Yeah, yeah, which is why you got to estimate it. But, yeah, man, Mills, I like this one. I like it a lot, too. I just am so worried about this like million dollar whip thing. And maybe it's overblown, but I've seen enough crazy things where a seller's like, no, this is the way it's going to happen. And it's so awful. Well, then I'll say, great, I just need to revise my price.

Yeah. I think it could be worked out. agree with you it's going to be a sticky wicket because this is going to be this guy who's been this business for 20 or 30 years. He's probably got to have strong opinions about it, etc. You're going to have to solve that and you're going to have the same problem with your warranty liability tail. Those will be sticking points in the deal, but I don't think they're unsolvable because there are kind of fair and market ways to handle those things. Yeah. One other thing that just comes to mind is I wonder if this is one of those like does the manufacturer, I don't think

there's only one person who makes these shades. But do the manufacturers have kind of exclusive distribution? You know, would they kind of say, hey, you're our guy or you're our gal in, you know, Myrtle Beach and, you know, and North all the way up to, like, or is it that I, I would think they have to buy these direct. Like, you're not going to Lowe's and buying them. You're not buying them from like an ABC supply or like guaranteed supply or, like, guaranteed supply or grant. or somebody like that. They're specialty distributed, but there may not even be a middleman in between you and the manufacturer.

I think it may be like a dealer model, you know, like treks or something like that where these guys have an account with a couple, there's probably a couple brands of these things, right? Hopefully they don't have, I really hope they don't have to be exclusive to one brand. Hopefully they've got a bunch of different brands and they've chosen the ones that they think are the best

and that the customer likes and they have good margins on. Would it make you like it more or less if it was like a dealer type model. I don't know. I think I would have to diligence because you can Google, right? Or like the seller is going to tell you this is the best one. This is the best manufacturer. But I would really have to diligence probably more than just Google.

Is it actually the best one? And like what, because if you're wed to one person, then it's a huge, huge, huge issue. Because they can unmarry you. Yeah, exactly. And then you're going to have to go scramble and find another, which is possible. but definitely not something you want to underwrite. So I don't know. I think I have so many questions,

but it opens up like a whole other like, you know, area of this deal that makes me really curious about it. So on one hand, like let's say there is a big brand. And this guy is the exclusive dealer in a certain territory. On one hand, great,

right? Protected territory, license print money. The hurricanes just keep coming through. This is probably one of the best territories that manufacturer has. as until your contract is not renewed, right? It comes up for bid or whatever. So now you've really got a diligence to the heck out of that contract. But that could be a hell of a moat if there

was one. At the same time, if you don't have that, how easy is it to start up and compete with this business? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, I don't, this is kind of like, it's even a little bit different than a residential roof. Like, the problem with residential roofing and your lifetime value of customer is that people roof their house once every 20 years, if you're doing it right. And by the time they're putting another roof on, like they've forgotten about you, you know, and it's been too long. This is probably one of those things where you really only do it once.

Like, do you have to replace these every 20 years? Maybe. They might rust. I mean, everything russ on the Carolina. That's true. That's actually a good point. That might even counteract faster than a roof decline. I don't know.

I mean, I'm Googling now because it's, you know, I'm more and more curious. And I don't know. There's no, let's see, there's one, two sponsored, this is just on a Google search. There's two sponsored, you know, companies that come up. And then one of the sponsored companies does come up pretty, they come up number one in the list on the SEO. And it's Hurricane Shudders, Florida. but it's not clear, you know, I don't think we're making it around.

Yeah. Yeah. So there's no, they're not like passing. It's not like a boat dealership or something where the brand that matters is the brand of shutters. It's the brand of the installer that matters, which is good. Yeah.

It means there's some real brand equity here. And this company, I mean, they've just got tons and tons of photos. A lot of them commercial and residential. They've got YouTube video showing the installation. Like, it's pretty interesting.

Yeah, there's definitely different price points for this. They don't look very good. You know, if you're used to seeing windows without these like big, the high-end homes put the hurricane glass, the bowling ball glass. Yeah, but that's a small percentage of the market. I mean, most of the market, like you put these things out. I mean, I want to hear like smartguard shutters.com where you can buy them online for yourself. You know, it like gives you a PDF on how to measure the finished width, the operation type.

I mean, so there maybe is a little bit of a DIY option here, but I think probably not a lot of the market is. Probably not. I wouldn't think. Yeah. And so I would wonder like if you could compete with these guys, if you could just become a really good marketer and do everything we discussed, the postcards, the property tax records, et cetera, and kind of wiggle in on their market. especially if there had just been an event. Like, I want you wait for a catastrophic loss and then you just blanket it. And they bootstrap your business overnight.

But man, that would be kind of hard to manage that demand and go, what does it fall off to? You know, like, what's the steady state of this? I really want to understand both the yearly seasonality, but also the catastrophic event seasonality and how you handle that. Because you've got to think, a big hurricane comes in. like logic tells you that's when everybody wants it. But really that, like at that point it's too late, right? And people are trying to clean up the damage from the hurricane,

not necessarily thinking about, you know, putting the shutters on the next. Well, not necessarily, right? Because they're cleaning up the damage and then they're like, I'm putting those hurricane shutters on. Yes. No, for the next one, right?

Like when they rebuild. And, you know, I wonder how, like, if you can get it claimed in insurance, like if they weren't already there, or maybe they were already there. and the hurricane shutters didn't break, but the bowling ball went through the siding.

Who knows? And then there's still an insurance claim. So you probably do have to deal with third-party payers, you know, at times. I wonder if you deal with many GCs because, like, I'm sure occasionally, right, these get put in at new construction, but this seems like a thing a builder would cheap out on.

Yeah, builders, like, you handle that in a year when, you know, you've actually lived in the house and now you're worried about these things. Exactly. So it's probably just direct. a consumer. I dig it. I don't know about the price at 5x. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, a 4x, you know, I don't hate it. I really don't. And that was, that was an interesting one. It ended up being way more interesting than I thought, even when I first looked at it. Do you think you have to live there, Mills? Yeah. Yeah, but that's just me. I can't imagine

buying and operating a business and not living there. Yeah, I think that would be tough. I mean, you got 17 people, like, in trucks, on job sites, and you're not around. and that's going to be a tough cell. Yeah. Yeah. But that being said, it's a nice place to live. Totally. Yeah.

You know, Carolina Coast is gorgeous. You know, Outer Banks is fantastic. I think this is a great place. Maybe I'll do it. I'll pack it up and we'll move to the Outer Banks. Funny, I bought, we bought a business. I bought a business and a house on the beach. We're going.

I love it. All right, it's thumbs up for me. I'm definitely a thumbs up. I want to know more. I love it. Good deal, Mills. Thank you for bringing it. All right.

If you guys like this, we have over 400 more that are even better because there are sometimes even more people on the pod. You'll get Heather Anderson and Michael Gurdley as well, opining on everything from software deals to e-commerce deals to construction companies to music royalties. I mean, we've done it all. And all of the episodes are free. They are at ACQU Anon, Acquan, however you say that out loud.com. You can also find us on X, aka Twitter, where we would love all the hosts are on there. The General Mills and Bill D.A. are the two of us.

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