Most people who advise door dealers on a sale have never run a door operation. Chris Jones has, and I am glad to introduce him as my new partner. He spent his working life inside the overhead door industry, with dealers and alongside the manufacturers, and he has watched the consolidation that reshaped HVAC and plumbing arrive in the door trade. He has joined Jackim Woods & Co. as Managing Director for the overhead door and loading dock sector and leads our overhead door and loading dock practice, which means owners in this industry can get a read on their business from someone who understands it from the truck up.
1. Where he comes from
Chris built his career with one of the industry's major manufacturers, working with dealers across North America on how they sold, serviced, staffed and grew. He is the kind of operator who bought the market data and then drove it out into the field, sitting with a dealer to work out his share of a market and where the next ten points of growth would come from. Along the way he presented to private equity boards, got to know the groups that are now consolidating the industry, and formed relationships with many of them. He retired from that career about a year ago and did what a lot of owners say they will do: fished, kept bees with his daughter, built houses with a volunteer crew in Appalachia, and sat on the board of a nonprofit where he teaches business leaders how to run a company with a system instead of a founder's memory.
2. Why he is doing this
Chris and I have known each other for more than forty years. When the Jackim Woods team and I started looking hard at the overhead door industry, our conversations kept coming back to the same thing: the good dealers are getting a call every week or two from someone who wants to buy them, and almost none of them have an independent read on what the business is worth or whether it is ready to be sold. The people who used to broker door dealers are not out marketing that service. Most owners end up asking their accountant. Chris has worked with more than one dealer who sold too early, and he does not want that to be the normal outcome for the people he spent his career with.
3. What he actually does with an owner
The first conversation is a thirty-minute consultation. No preparation, no fee, no obligation. Owners bring whatever is on their mind, and it is usually one of four things:
Current operations. Segment mix between residential replacement, new construction and commercial. How many service techs and trucks, what each truck produces in a day, where the margin is going.
Acquisitions. Whether to buy the competing dealer or the service book down the road, and what it should be worth to you rather than to a consolidator.
Transaction planning. What the groups buying dealers actually underwrite, what a second bite at the apple really means, and whether to take the next call or let it ring.
Value enhancement. For owners a year or two out, getting the business ready: clean financials with the personal expenses out, a management layer a buyer can trust, and a strategy deployment system so the company runs without the founder in every decision.
Where a full sale process makes sense, Jackim Woods & Co. runs it. Where the business is not ready, Chris will say so, and the work becomes getting it ready.
4. How he thinks about the people in this industry
Chris will tell you the door business is a blue-collar industry built by people who started on the truck and grew a company out of nothing. Most of them were not business people when they started. They deserve someone with some bedside manner, who respects what they have built, and who is in their corner when a buyer's team shows up with a spreadsheet. That is the job as he sees it.
The takeaway
If you own an overhead door, garage door or loading dock equipment business and your phone has started ringing, you now have someone to call who has spent a lifetime in the industry and has no interest in buying your company. Chris Jones is a Managing Director at Jackim Woods & Co. and a member of the BizNexus Partner Network.
