“Making It Work” is a series about small-business owners striving to endure hard times.
When Nicole Rizzo saw the “For Sale” listing for Die Cleaning Equipment, the first detail she liked was that it was run by a married couple. Ms. Rizzo, then 43, was searching for a company to run alongside her own husband. But her husband, David, was puzzled by the name. Was it something involving janitors?
Die Cleaning Equipment, as it turned out, employed welders. The company in Phoenix made machines that cleaned other machines — specifically, aluminum extruders, which force the metal into shapes useful for everything from bumpers to stethoscopes to gun parts. Steve Smith oversaw the shop, where a small team assembled vats and pumps out of stainless steel. His wife, Kristin, handled the finances.
The Smiths had carved out their niche-within-a-niche from scratch, with Ms. Smith initially moonlighting as a church secretary to keep food on the table. But as the couple approached their 70s, they dreamed of a new relationship with aluminum, involving monthslong trips in an Airstream trailer.
A younger couple like the Rizzos were not the obvious choice. Neither knew much about aluminum. Ms. Rizzo had worked in local government, and Mr. Rizzo had held mostly corporate jobs in farming. But a visit to the Smiths’ shop near the Phoenix airport proved illuminating.
“I saw the machines and I was like, This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” Ms. Rizzo said. In June 2021, the Rizzos bought the company for about $600,000. Ms. Rizzo became chief executive. Almost four years later, the couple have recovered their investment.
The ranks of “searchers,” as prospective buyers like the Rizzos are often called, are growing. That’s partly a product of demographics — the generation in their 30s and 40s is the largest ever — and also of a surge of workers pivoting toward greater autonomy. On BizBuySell, the popular listings site where the Rizzos found the Smiths, “corporate refugees” ditching the 9-to-5 have surged to 42 percent of buyers, roughly double the 2021 figure. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of American small businesses are owned by people 65 and older, making the Smiths part of a “silver tsunami” of sellers.
Enrollment has soared in business school courses on “entrepreneurship through acquisition” — the art of building upon success, rather than hatching it. But an M.B.A. is no requirement. A legion of influencers on YouTube, LinkedIn and TikTok bear advice for how to “think niche” and “buy boring.”
“People are realizing that buying a business is a much less risky proposition than starting a new one,” said Bob House, the president of BizBuySell.
Part of the appeal are loans from the Small Business Administration that can require as little as five percent down from small-business buyers. But borrowers are on the hook for failure. More than a third never find a buyer.
Among searchers, one adage is to fall in love with the economics of the business first. Prepare, then, to be fascinated by the day-to-day details — and challenges.
Brittney Orellano, 39, first learned about “the search” in 2022, through a podcast interview with Codie Sanchez, a YouTuber who often posts about the virtues of acquiring a “boring business.” Ms. Orellano and her husband, Ray, 46, had built a property management company together in Kansas City, Kan. But it had never occurred to her that she could buy a business that was already successful.
The Orellanos’ search was immediately “a full-court press.” She downloaded more podcasts and quizzed her accountant, her friends, her plumber: Was anyone looking to sell?
Six months into their search, the couple acquired Radio Controlled Garage Door & Gate for just under $1 million, financed primarily through an S.B.A. loan.
But they soon realized that, in their excitement, they had “missed some red flags.” The seller walked away with boxes of physical sales records, leaving them without a customer database. The person described as a “general manager” was merely a dispatcher. To turn off one of the vans they inherited, they had to pop the hood and unscrew a valve.
Still, nearly two years later, Ms. Orellano doesn’t regret the venture. She was proud of offering an everyday service over a glitzy one — even as she avoids boring friends with the finer details of garage door clickers.
Most searchers, Ms. Orellano realizes now, are more calculated. The average search is about 18 months and involves browsing through online listings, bonding with reputable brokers, and sending cold emails to potential retirees in the search for a hidden gem. Certain criteria prevail: strong revenue, a “fragmented” industry where small operators can thrive, room for growth.
“A lot more people are getting in the game,” said Nick Haschka, 39, an entrepreneur and investor known for his advice on LinkedIn and X. In 2017, after a failed startup endeavor, he and a business partner bought the Wright Gardner, a 30-year-old San Francisco company that maintains indoor office plants. His friends had questions: He was doing what with his M.I.T. degree? Landscaping? He was far younger than most of his 11 employees.
“I don’t think I had any grand expectations to go and rule the world,” he said. “It was almost the opposite.” If he could not be a tech titan, he could water their ficuses.
Today, would-be entrepreneurs also face growing competition from “search funds” run by recent business school graduates who partner with outside investors, and from private equity firms. Mr. Haschka advises searchers to consider overlooked trends. He had recently begun buying generator businesses, reasoning that the disruptions to California’s power grid aren’t going anywhere.
In Phoenix, the Smiths were proud of their products, which safely automated a hot and caustic process. But they struggled to find a buyer who wanted to keep the business and its employees where they were. “We didn’t want our baby to die,” Ms. Smith recalled. .
Then came the Rizzos. They had considered Jiffy Lube franchises and inquired about a port-a-potty service, but it had already sold, it turned out, to their real estate broker.
When the deal closed, it was an adjustment. Two days in, an expert welder “went to see about her horses,” Ms. Rizzo said, and never returned. They were midway through building two machines at the time.
But another welder stepped in, and the contracts kept coming. The couple, who are currently looking for a bigger space, have added services like installations. If they have any complaints, it’s that success in a niche can be lonely. “Only a few of our relatives think it’s impressive,” Ms. Rizzo said. “Most people are like, whatever.”
If they want to “get nerdy” about aluminum, they still have the Smiths. Every few months, the two couples have breakfast together. Mr. Smith recently teared up when he heard about their latest contract. “His greatest fear was that the person who bought the business would fail,” Ms. Rizzo said. Each new machine was a sign that he had put his baby in the right hands.
It was time for the Smiths, at last, to go camping.