New Off-Market Businesses For Sale

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NEW OFF-MARKET DEALS

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📍 Location: North Carolina
💼 EBITDA: $500,000
📊 Revenue: $1,000,000
📅 Established: 2022

💭 My 2 Cents: The average car on American roads just hit a record 12.8 years old, and drivers priced out of new vehicles are fixing what they own instead of replacing it, which makes independent auto repair one of the most demand-secure trades you can buy into right now. This shop caught that wave well, opening in 2022 and hitting seven figures in three years on word of mouth and minimal ad spend, with an owner who runs the backend rather than turning wrenches. But the number that needs explaining before anything else is the margin. $500K of EBITDA on $1M of revenue is roughly double what well-run independent shops produce, so I'd want to see exactly how the seller gets there: what's in the add-backs, whether the owner or family members are working for below-market pay, and whether rent reflects market rate or a building the seller happens to own. I’d also dig into tenure and comp for each tech against local market rates, since the crew is three technicians and one service advisor in a trade where roughly 80% of shops report a tech shortage. Then the growth itself: car count and average repair order by year, labor versus parts mix, and what share of this year's revenue came from cars the shop had already serviced before. Parts gross 20 to 40 percent in this trade while labor grosses 60 to 70, which makes the labor-to-parts split the real test here, since a 50 percent margin isn't something you mark up parts your way to, it's something only billed hours can build.

📍 Location: Remote
💼 EBITDA: $500,000
📊 Revenue: $1,500,000
📅 Established: 2001

💭 My 2 Cents: Most architectural photography is a solo shooter charging a few thousand a shoot, but this operation is doing seven figures with a full team, with the owner and his wife handling only accounting, finance, and oversight. After 24 years it has an operations manager, three editors, a videographer, two salespeople, offshore editing, and a bench of subcontractors. The catch is that the work is project-based, so the question is what keeps architects and builders coming back when they only need photos at the end of a project. It's also leveraged to construction activity, so I'd ask what 2008 and 2020 looked like plus whether any of the revenue doesn't depend on new buildings getting finished (like hotel and interiors refresh work, renovations, or relicensing images from the archive). I'd also dig into client concentration among the top accounts, how much of the editing depends on the offshore team versus the in-house editors, and whether the two salespeople own the client relationships in a way that would let them walk and take the book with them. One quirk of this trade most buyers won't know: a single shoot can be licensed separately to the architect, the builder, the landscape firm, even the fixture manufacturers who want the building in their marketing, so ask whether this business cost-shares shoots that way. If it does, revenue per shoot is a multiple of the day rate. If it doesn't, you just found the growth plan.

📍 Location: New York
💼 EBITDA: $900,000
📊 Revenue: $4,500,000
📅 Established: 2006

💭 My 2 Cents: Wholesale produce is a punishing trade, since distributors compete on razor-thin margins, spoilage eats every mistake, and a truck that misses a morning delivery can lose an account for good. Surviving in that environment for nearly 20 years is the signal that matters here, but it also makes the numbers strange in a good way: $900K on $4.5M is a 20% margin in an industry that typically runs low single digits. Something is different about this business, whether that's specialty product, restaurant-direct pricing, a value-add step, or add-backs doing heavy lifting, and finding out which is question one. If the margin is real, it's probably the same thing explaining the customer loyalty, since buyers who switch suppliers over a few cents a case don't stay 20 years with a commodity distributor. I'd want the sourcing side mapped as carefully as the customer list, because in produce the real moat is often getting allocation of good product in a tight week, and with a hands-on owner and a lean six-person team, those grower relationships are likely his to hand over (which makes the transition period part of what you're negotiating for). I'd also check receivables and bad debt, since credit terms are where produce distributors quietly bleed. One more thing most buyers won't know: produce has its own federal trust law, PACA, which puts unpaid suppliers ahead of secured lenders, so your bank will ask about the license transfer and open payables before you do.

📍 Location: South Carolina
💼 EBITDA: $1,000,000
📊 Revenue: $3,500,000
📅 Established: 2000

💭 My 2 Cents: Demand for outdoor living has climbed roughly 50% since 2020 and held there, a durable shift rather than a pandemic blip, as high mortgage rates keep homeowners in place and pushing money into decks and hardscape instead of moving. This 25-year-old operation runs a smart structure for the trade, with three full-time staff and the rest subcontracted, so labor scales with the job rather than sitting as fixed overhead through the slow months. That said, the owner is the primary salesperson, so a buyer inherits the need to sell or to hire someone who can. The seller is 57 and open to staying on post-sale, which gives a buyer a runway to learn how deals get closed here. One detail worth flagging is that the trucks and equipment, a set of 2023 to 2025 models, all carry notes, so the equipment that looks like an asset may carry debt that changes the purchase math. The questions I'd press hardest on are how much of the work the owner personally sources versus repeat and referral demand, whether the subcontractor crews are locked in or shared with competitors, and how gross margin holds across deck versus hardscape jobs. A construction business this dependent on one person's selling ability lives or dies on the transition, so a buyer should treat the seller's post-sale involvement as the most important term in the deal.

📍 Location: Wisconsin
💼 EBITDA: $500,000
📊 Revenue: $2,000,000
📅 Established: 2008

💭 My 2 Cents: This is three businesses under one roof: a plastic concrete-forming tube manufacturer, a blow molding facility, and an outdoor cat house eCommerce brand selling mostly through Amazon and its own site. The interesting part is that the plant can make what the other two sell, an edge most eCommerce sellers never get because they're stuck buying from the same factories that could undercut them. The seller says demand already exceeds capacity, so the constraint is production rather than sales, which is a better problem to inherit than the reverse. The complication is that the owner personally handles sales, customer relations, shipping, and marketing across all three. Staffing swings from 4 to 10 by season and the companies share employees and equipment, so untangling what belongs to each is essential given the seller will sell them together or separately. Before anything else I'd map how revenue and profit split across the three, what share of cat house revenue runs through Amazon versus the brand's own site, and what capital it would take to expand the capacity the seller says is maxed out. The integrated structure is the reason to look here, but a buyer should price each business on its own merits first, since a bundle is only a bargain if all three pieces are worth owning.