S06 EP08: Private Equity Playbook for eCommerce

On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Chris Shipferling, Managing Partner at Global Wired Advisors - an investment bank specialising in buyouts in the DTC segment. Together with his highly experienced team, Chris provides companies with comprehensive financial advice and strategic planning through the sales transaction. Entrepreneurs start businesses for various reasons. For some it will come to represent their life’s work and carry on for decades. For others it is an asset to grow, nurture and ultimately sell for a profit. The latter is definitely the more prevalent scenario, especially in the DTC world. Almost every other day, we read about businesses getting bought and sold for huge sums of money.  Buyouts are becoming more common and aided by the stellar growth spurt of eCommerce, money has come flooding into the market. More VCs, PEs and Investment banks are on the lookout for companies ripe for sale. However, with more opportunity comes more noise and different challenges. It is easy for founders to take their eye off the ball, i.e. their business, while seeking out and speaking to investors. In today’s episode, Kunle and Chris talk about the ins and outs of an exit strategy. You will get to hear about how investors screen businesses, what metrics they look at, and how transactions are modelled. This is a great episode for anyone building a business (whether or not they plan to sell it in the future). ----------- SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by: Klaviyo  This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo. Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper’s first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments. Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.   Rewind This episode is brought to you by Rewind. The #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and Movement Watches rely on Rewind. Cloud-based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!   For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind.io, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention ‘2x ecommerce’ Famous This episode is brought to you by Famous. Famous enables brands on Shopify to easily build beautiful landing pages and product pages that include custom video, animations, and more. All pages built on famous are optimized for storytelling and selling on desktop and mobile.   Famous’ software allows you to build your pages in minutes without code, so you don’t need a developer. You just need to want to build a better experience for your customers. Famous has worked in the past with many leading online retailers including Honest, Justfab and more.   You can try it for free at famous.co/2x.