Interested in buying an established repair business

[harrellbenjamin]

Exactly.............a w/shield route is not worth much more then the equipment and the training.No one can keep anyone out of a stop or keep them from going with another vendor.No brick or mortor there.Now thats not to say that some one could be sold on the value of an established route and many can be sold a dream......................When I started I had a guy stop and ask me what I was doing in his stop?? LOL I asked him "when do you come here?" He said "every other tuesday" so.......I service it every other monday.Its now "my stop" What I am saying is that no one owns a route or customer base and as such has very little "blue sky " value.

[Brent Deines]

True enough, however I have enough faith in myself that I would be very interested in buying someone's customers if the price were right. I'm confident that I can provide at least as good of service as anyone else, and hopefully better. Still there is no guarantee, so that certainly has to be taken into consideration.

When I bought Delta Kits I paid for the "Blue Sky" and I'm darn glad I did. It would have taken me year's longer to get where we are today if I had to start from scratch. Of course I have to admit I got a very good deal!

I also paid for the "Blue Sky" when I purchased a pressure wash business years ago, and without those existing customers I think I would have thrown in the towel. I believe there is value there, especially if the person who built up those accounts did so with honesty, integrity, and exceptional customer service.

[harrellbenjamin]

I agree Blue sky is good but was just illustrating that in no way worth 1-3 years of gross receipts in value.I think you also agree to that too.

[GlassStarz]

Thats true if you are a self assured people person and know you can sell yourself well enough its pretty easy to keep established customers making a smooth transition but if you are new at something and it is obvios it wont be long before the customer base dries up guess there are several ways too look at it.
Myself I tell people give me 5k I will come to your area cold call with you and build a customer base for 2 weeks and you will have an established money making buisness bringing in at least $500 a week when I leave and the knowledge to grow it from there

[jayjacque]

I think many of us would be wise to plan for the future. Realizing that what we have is a profitable business and therefore able to be sold as such if need be, or at least we have that option. How much it's worth of course is determined by what others have already mentioned: length of time in business, how much revenue brought in yearly, etc.

Anything that makes someone a decent income is worth a lot these days. I do other auto reconditioning services besides W/R, so not quite the same but similiar nonetheless. 20-25 years ago I sold my business twice for only about $4000 each time. Today businesses like mine are going for are more like $50,000 to $100,000. You might think, but that is for more tools, equipment, and set up to offer more services than just windshield repair, in order to earn more revenue. So that should be worth more than just a small one-man Windshield Repair operation. Well, yes to some degree, but on the other hand think of how easy the training and transition could be for a simpler set up business than something that needs training in multiple skills?
And for those of you who offer even one more service (with already established accounts) besides W/R - bingo! You've got something very valuable.