Selling a detailing business?

[coryk]

Has anybody ever sold a detailing business?

I am going to be moving out of the country for a few years, and i dont think that i want to just let my stuff just sit and get old for the next years. I have a buddy of mine that is interested in buying the business from me. Does anbody know how much would be a fair deal to both him and I as the seller and buyer. I do the detailing as my job, but i dont work full time, because i am going to school. so i work probably at most 15 days a month.

My average income for a year is a little over $26,000.
I have over $3,000 equiptment (8x10 trailter, full set up with power washer, generator, Porter Cable, 125 gallon water tank with a pump, surplus of chemicals, tools, etc..)
I have a registered name for the business, and it is an LLC.
I have a smaller clientelle base, but always am full of work.
I have thousands of professional flyers for advertising, as well as a nice plastic A frame sign.

If anybody could help or give me some input on how to go about making a fair sell, i would greatly appreciate the help.

Thanks for your time!

[Dust2Glory]

$20,000... keep ur LLC, have ur buddy get his own. or you can get a lawyer to change the name on the llc

[dennish]

Couple of hints here..

First make him create his own LLC and transfer the assets from your LLC to his LLC that cuts down and problems and limits exposer to liability of any kind.

Each business is worth not a penny more than you can sell it for. A lot people try to use one year gross and hard assets plus some sort of blue sky. I have sold a one business on that formula but the last business I sold I sold hard assets + intangible assets + a fix amount per subscribing customer = Sold for Price. So there is a lot of ways to buy and sell business but the bottom line is figuring out what some will pay. I would say if you could get 20,000.00 I would take it and run but the problem you are going to find is finding someone with enough cash and credit to purchase it. The only thing that a bank can take as collateral is the hard asset of 3000.00 and they will probably only loan 1500.00 (50 cents on a dollar) so since they are not new. What I would try to do is get at least the hard assets in cash then carry the contract for sale myself and hope he pays for it but finding a cash buy for maybe 10,000 to 15,000 would not expose you to quite as much risk. You kinda have to have your gut feels help you make up your mind on which is best for you.

[coryk]

Thanks so much for your guys' advice. I really appreciate it. I am thinking that i will ask $12,000. But i am not going any lower than $10,000. I think that is a pretty good deal, i mean that could be paid off in less than 6 months. Oh, i forgot to mention that i am going to train him on what knowledge i have on detailing. Does that seem like a fair trade? 12,000?

[sam5828]

Depends on the area, figure what ya make then take that times 2.5 that is what the business is worth, if you are in a warm climate this figure works good, it all depends on demograpics, don't cut yourself short you built the business so why give it away, we have a Insurance agency for sale right now and that is the figures we had to use, now if we were in FLA, it would have been 4.5x all just depends on the area..

keep your LLC make him get his own, you may need it when ya get back for something else, we have 2 corps. 1 we use for agency and the other just sits there for when we need it