Case study: ROC Tours targets its sales pitch

After six years of running one of Western Australia’s largest cycle tour companies, Terry and Maree Harrison decided to sell their family business and take a break from the rigours of small business ownership.

The Harrisons bought ROC Tours in 2000 and expanded the business to include a total of 19 tours, ranging from four to 40 days in duration, travelling a circuit that runs from Perth to Uluru, Alice Springs, Darwin, Adelaide and across the Nullarbor Plain.

While most tours catered to cycling and mountain biking enthusiasts, the Harrisons also introduced a series of overnight and four-wheel-drive tours suited to less active travellers and backpackers.

In October last year, the couple made the decision to sell the business and immediately sourced a business broker, on the recommendation of their accountant.

Mrs Harrison then embarked on the arduous and time-consuming process of compiling a list of assets and financials for the current and previous year, to prepare the business for valuation and sale by the broker.

“Sitting down and listing all the assets was probably the challenging part because you had to decide what everything’s worth and remember how much you’ve got,” Mrs Harrison said. “You’ve got more than you think when you start writing it down.”

Adding to the challenge in the Harrisons’ case was the extension of the administrative process due to the prospective buyer requesting more information than was required by the broker.

“The prospective buyer has asked for individual tour cost expenditures, which I hadn’t worked out because I was working on a month-by-month profit and loss and an annual profit and loss, not looking at each individual tour,” Mrs Harrison said.

After receiving three or four lukewarm enquiries via advertising on the broker’s web site and in the newspaper, Mrs Harrison decided last month to adopt a more targeted strategy.

“Because we weren’t getting enough offers, we emailed other cycle tour businesses…to let them know that the business was on the market, and if they knew of anyone who was interested,” Mrs Harrison said.

Within two weeks, the Harrisons’ broker received a call from a cycle tour company based in South Australia, which had heard of the sale offer through one of Mrs Harrison’s emails.

That company is currently in negotiations with the Harrisons.

Mrs Harrison said the fact that the business was such a boutique offering, and in the sometimes notoriously volatile tourism industry, meant that selling the operation also required a unique approach.

“It’s an unusual business, it’s not the common business that is usually sold through a broker like a newsagency or cafe,” she said.

“It really needed to be targeted at cycling enthusiasts.”

Despite using her own methods to find a buyer, Mrs Harrison said hiring a business broker was vital in valuing the business accurately and ensuring all the appropriate paperwork was compiled – from financial information and booking statistics to a complete asset list and an overview of the business.

“The broker has been fantastic. We couldn’t have done it without a broker,” she said.

“In regards to all the things you need to do to sell the business, putting it all together, I couldn’t have done that by myself. He put a 36-page document together, I couldn’t have done that.

“It was good to have him there and make sure it went through smoothly.”