The owner waited. The business grew fivefold.

How an outdoor furniture manufacturer became a much more valuable business before its owner sold.

An opportunity to sell—and a decision to wait

When I first pitched this outdoor furniture manufacturer, it generated approximately $10 million of EBITDA. The owner considered a sale but decided to wait.

Five years later, I encountered the business again—this time on the buy side. EBITDA had grown to approximately $50 million, and the company sold at a valuation approaching $1 billion.

Same business. A very different starting point for a transaction.

Waiting was only part of the story

The company did not simply hold on and hope for a better offer. Over those five years, it grew organically through channel expansion, direct-to-consumer sales, and improvements in operating efficiency.

Those initiatives expanded the business’s reach and strengthened its earnings. By the time the owner sold, buyers were evaluating a company with five times the EBITDA it had generated during our earlier conversations.

Seeing the outcome from the other side

My role made this transaction particularly memorable. I had first discussed a potential sale with the owner. Years later, working on the buy side, I saw what the decision to keep building had produced.

An earlier sale would have transferred the opportunity for that growth to someone else. By retaining ownership, the seller participated in the value created along the way.

That does not mean an earlier sale would necessarily have been wrong. The owner also retained the risks of running and growing the business. But in this case, the decision to wait was followed by substantial execution—and a dramatically different outcome.

The owner takeaway

The question is not simply, “What could I sell for today?” It is also, “What could this business become, what will it take to get there, and do I want to remain the owner through that journey?”

Waiting can create significant value when there is a credible growth opportunity and the ability to deliver it. Here, five years of execution changed the scale of both the business and the eventual sale.