Less than the counter suggests and more than the equipment would bring, and the range is wide. Where you land comes down to the six things above — how much lease you have left and whether the books support the volume, more than anything else.

We put together an opinion of value from your own numbers rather than a multiple stuck on your sales. It takes a few weeks and it costs you nothing to find out.

What we will not do is price it at what you would like to get. A defensible number brings offers. An aspirational one spends the listing’s best weeks being ignored, and every conversation after that is about coming down.

Almost always, and it is the highest-return thing you can do before going to market. A buyer needs a lease that outlasts their loan, and a lender will say so plainly. Three years with no options narrows your buyer pool to cash purchasers, and prices accordingly.

Negotiate the extension before anyone knows you are selling. A landlord who learns of it first has every reason to wait.

Not necessarily — it is worth differently. A plant has equipment, staff and often wholesale accounts, which means more to sell and a wider buyer pool. A well-run drop store in a good centre has lower overhead, less to go wrong and a simpler transition, which some buyers prefer.

What costs money is pricing one as though it were the other. Establishing which you are, and what buyers pay for that, is the first thing we do.

Because you will do this once. The buyers who have been looking for a cleaner like yours move quickly when one finally appears, and that wave passes once — which is why the strongest offers almost always arrive in the first sixty to ninety days.

If the business is not ready to stand up to questions when those buyers show up, you spend your best weeks explaining instead of negotiating. We do not publish until the financials are recast, the operations are written down, and the questions buyers are going to ask already have answers.

Industry estimates put the share of listed businesses that actually sell at somewhere between 20 and 40 percent, depending on the source and the size of the business. Most of what decides which side of that you land on happens before the listing goes out.

Not from us. Information is released in stages behind a signed agreement — a blind profile with no store name first, and nothing that identifies you until a buyer has been screened. Your employees, customers, suppliers and competitors do not learn about the sale from the process.

On telling the staff: after closing, with the money cleared. In a business where one presser or one tailor can be most of the back of the house, giving them a reason to start looking is the one risk entirely inside your control.

Run the store exactly the way you were running it when the buyer made the offer. That is not a throwaway line. A soft quarter during due diligence is the most common reason a good deal gets renegotiated down or falls apart, and a dip in tickets shows up immediately.

Everything else is ours: buyer questions, the document room, the lender, the attorneys, the landlord. We coordinate it through to closing so the deal does not stall in the last mile. Your job is the work.

Usually for a short, defined transition — often thirty to sixty days for a store, longer where you personally handle the difficult garments or hold the wholesale relationships. A buyer is not trying to keep you; they are trying to keep what you know.

The more of that sits with your staff and your systems before we go to market, the shorter the stay a buyer will agree to.