FOR SALE BY OWNER LIST PRICE $199,999 CONTACT: CRAIG DAVIDIUK, PRESIDENT TEL:

Transcription

1 FOR SALE BY OWNER LIST PRICE $199,999 CONTACT: CRAIG DAVIDIUK, PRESIDENT TEL:

2 HISTORY Ultimate Promotions is a 13 year old online vendor of lapel pins, medals and promotional products. The company is based in Squamish, BC which is an hours drive north from Vancouver. Owner Craig Davidiuk moved here in 2009 to position his company for success during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. It proved to be an excellent move and he generated several new clients from pre olympic events and events at the venues. He also developed a strong following of education, sport, government and non profit customers. The company flourished online and was always an early adopter of new trends and methods for online marketing. Sales grew into the 400k range within three years. Within the first three years he purchased the phone number, customer lists and art assets from two local companies in decline, the Brush and Bobbin and Squamish T shirts. This quickly established the company in the Sea to Sky Corridor as the leading local vendor of promotional products and clothing. His reach grew over the years to include a strong customer base in Vancouver and Victoria and other locales in BC. In 2007, Craig met his wife Courtney and brought her into the company as Vice President. Courtney refined our Maximizer CRM based sales system and helped Craig transition into Marketing full time. In 2012, Craig purchased the assets of 40 year old former manufacturer and online vendor named Juniper Emblems in Alberta. ( It was his family business ) The sale included the telephone line, art files and database and the company was moved to BC. Since that time the company has generated approximately 75% of its monthly sales from Juniper Emblems. Prior to owning Ultimate Promotions, Craig Davidiuk worked for many years at his parents lapel pin factory Juniper Emblems, in Lacombe, Alberta in design, sales and marketing. The Juniper Emblems name is a very strong brand in Alberta, BC, NWT, Yukon and Nunavut. These areas have 30+ year relationships with the owner and his family. The juniperemblems.com URL is is over 18 years URL is also included in the sale. We feel there is an opportunity to re brand the company with the old name. In 2013 we found a new Chinese based lapel pin factory that had an office in Canada. They changed the way we did business. They offer free shipping and duty for lapel pins and medals. This allowed us to obtain cost certainty and healthy margins since switching suppliers. (Previously we had an employee in Shanghai who would broker our orders.) Most pin orders offer a profit of 60% or more. For other promotional products we use a number of tested and trusted suppliers in the US and Canada. Most promotional products offer a margin of 40%. MONETIZATION SEO & SEM: During our 13 year history we have worked with a number of SEO and marketing professionals to generate leads. When times are good and we and can support the monthly retainer, traditional SEO practices worked well until the Google Panda algorithm change. Panda really challenged us and that can be attributed to the sharp decline in sales in Previously we were able to be relevant online without really doing that much. Panda made it necessary to try and adopt an entirely new marketing system that was very hard for ownership to understand and costly to implement. marketing is consistently executed at our company for the past 10 years. The most popular and engaging s have been generated with the use of Hubspot and inbound marketing.

3 Adwords has been tried in the past in house but we have never really been able to afford the high cost. Our fluctuating sales levels make it hard to participate in Adwords. Until adopting the Hubspot platform recently, our attempts at creating and administering landing pages in house for Adwords were very primitive. We have not purchased Adwords for over a year because we have shifted focus to Inbound Marketing. There is a significant adwords history in our Google Analytics and Adwords accounts. We feel that if a person was skilled at adwords they would be able to generate a significant level of traffic given the landing pages we can create in hubspot. Example: a quote for custom lapel pins Inbound Marketing has been our obsession for over 16 months now. We engaged an inbound marketing company to set up and train us on the Hubspot platform in February Since then we have been blogging consistently about lapel pins, medals and a lesser focus on promotional products. You can easily automate the sales and marketing process using one tool. The owner also produced a video called Make Swag Pay which teaches people how to use inbound and swag. Telephone. Owning the Juniper Emblems telephone line has been the biggest boost to business in the company's history. We have always used a call centre to ensure our customers never get sent to voice mail. One cannot overlook the 13 year history of the Ultimate Promotions telephone line as well. Our call centre is very skilled and has worked with us for all of our 13 years in business. They can be utilized to outsource some of the sales process freeing up the new owner to respond to questions when its convenient.you can also use them to make sales calls and to refresh customer data in the database. Big picture, a lot of our customers still prefer to use the phone to talk to us when requesting quotes. Custom lapel pins and medals sometimes require a bit of conversation before you can help people understand what they are buying. This business is not the typical online business where you can try and automate and eliminate human contact. You are required to interface with customers daily and a good portion of our orders are time sensitive. Shopping Cart. We use a CMS call Concrete 5 with a customized shopping cart. Its simple and easy to use both for the owner and the user. Overall the shopping cart strategy has not worked well. Its been a significant cost to operate and has not turned out as planned. Someone with a background in programming shopping carts and ecommerce would be able to succeed. The vast majority of our customers want lapel pins or medals. Due to the complex nature of this product, many of them prefer to simply fill out a form or pick up the phone. TECHNOLOGY Our company currently uses Maximizer CRM 10, which is a server based CRM program. There is 13 years of company contacts. There is a legacy 4D database on a Mac server which contains all the art and customer info for Juniper Emblems. Its rare we have to use it but some customers literally call and say we bought pins from you 20 years ago. Do you still have the design? Since February 2014 we have been slowly moving towards adopting Hubspot CRM and Hubspot Marketing. Currently all marketing activities are conducted on Hubspot. Since doing so our engagement stats have increased significantly. Google Apps: We have all of the Juniper Emblems art files on a google drive account. (see video) Our is set up on google apps. When we transition, we will move the art files for Ultimate Promotions off the server onto the cloud upon request. Google drive can be tied into hubspot so as we dive into CRM deeper, we can link up customers art files online to their CRM record. We can offer video views of key areas of our business such as database, hubspot stats, art files online and call centre phone logs. Note: call centre works after hours but will still give you a sense of how active our phone is.

4 INCLUDED IN THE SALE This is an asset purchase. With the purchase of our assets you can expect: Dell Poweredge T100 Server Mac Server 2 PC workstation (1x new, 1x2yr old) Art Files for Juniper Emblems, approximately 10,000 files Art Files for Ultimate Promotions which include Squamish T shirts and Brush and Bobbin, 3000 files Maximizer Database with over 6000 records (segmented by customer type, product type) Quickbooks data for over 10 years Hubspot Enterprise membership with 1000 records in database (ie most of our current customers) Google Analytics A number of samples, swatch books Telephone Lines For Juniper Emblems: (43 years old) and the N. American toll free Ultimate Promotions: (13 years old) and the N. American Toll Free ASI Membership (crucial to do business and source product They also provide training and resources for distributor owners. You can also purchase "off the shelf" stores for distributors for a reasonable cost. URL's Included ultipromo.com (13 years old) ultimatepromotions.biz juniperemblems.com (18 years old) We have an employee who has worked with us as a graphic designer and administrator for nearly 15 years. She is still in Lacombe, Alberta and works remotely. She knows how the company works. She also knows the customers and their history and needs. The other job she does is make sure that all the orders that get placed are tracked and delivered. She is very easy to work with and would help you transition the company in the event you can t take her on. However we strongly suggest you keep her for at least six months or even permanently. The knowledge required to design pins is very different that print or web design. It takes years to "see" how a clients logo can be made into a pin. Social Accounts: Facebook: Ultimate Promotions Facebook: Juniper Emblems G+: Pinterest: Linked In promotions

5 TRANSITION PLAN We feel it will be necessary for the new owner to come to our office and learn our systems first to ensure a smooth transition. Free accommodation will be provided in our hotel. Timing wise, its best that the new ownership be in place by November This position allows the owner to get up to speed before the yearly rush in February and March for Government Year end orders.we want to be out by early December. The easiest thing to do would to learn hubspot and adopt Hubspot CRM as soon as possible and then take the server based databases with you when you leave. (2 3 weeks?). All of our leads for the past year have gone into hubspot with duplicates being set up in Maximizer. We have resisted moving to the cloud version because our version of Maximizer CRM because we've used a quickbooks integration that we are really fond of. The new owner will most likely establish books using a cloud based service which would allow a smooth transition to the Hubspot system. Its much easier to learn than Maximizer and there are numerous videos created by Hubspot that train you. The Owners are willing to offer any assistance required to help with the smooth transition. We ll always be here to answer any questions you have. Our customers are like family and it s important to us that they are served well in the future. Note that we are going to be unavailable between December 16th and January 18th, Outside those dates, we can be on call for questions. REASON FOR SELLING In 2014 the owners had a once in a lifetime opportunity to purchase a campground and hotel in Squamish, BC. Owners Courtney and Craig had a baby last October and are attempting to be full time parents and work at two companies. For that reason, we ve had to employ extra people in the past year. It has been a significant drain on the bottom line the past year. Right now there are too many employees and our focus has been elsewhere. The company was most profitable and successful in 2010 when we had three people working here. An administrator, an artist and a sales person. Since then its been a struggle to grow the company due to increased online competition. Now its a case of "right sizing" the company with the existing sales volume and then working on increasing sales within our existing customer base and increasing authority online with lapel pin related content. Craig is willing to remain under contract and produce blog and video content until the new owners are up to speed. This company suits a couple or two partners very nicely. Ideally one person is good with sales and marketing. And the other is good with administration and finance. The existing graphic designer could support them both as that's the role she has played thus far. She has also worked in the finance side of our business in the past. This company has always felt a bit bricks and mortar due to the fact it started as a factory and transitioned to an online business. Someone with the time and the right skills needs to take it to the next level of e commerce. The costs for shopping carts, custom programming, in bound content has always been cost prohibitive to outsource. A skilled programmer or e commerce expert would do well at the helm of this company.

6 DATA ABOUT OUR COMPANY Our customer list has been segmented and tracked since we opened. Each customer record contains purchase history and detailed notes. Our company has always been run with the assumption that anyone should be able to work here and understand the customer's needs and history.

7 WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS PURCHASE Lapel pin and medallion sales create extremely high margins for the company.

8 THE FREQUENCY IN WHICH OUR CUSTOMER BUY Our customers are very loyal. Some of our relationships date back 30+ Years. This allows us to compete on service and reputation instead of price. GROSS SALES PER YEAR In Canadian Dollars. Fiscal Year End Feb 28th 2015/16 Year to Date : $354, /15:$613, /14: $742, /13: $887, /12: $639,692.68