Chef Low Cal was started by co-founders with little food industry experience, but with a mission to develop a great-tasting diet bread. Maven was introduced to CLC thru an investor connected to a Bain alumni.  Maven was engaged to help CLC develop a road map for success. Recognizing that the business lacked sufficient funding to take on a project of this size combined with the promising and interesting nature of the business, Maven proposed to conduct the work for a mix of equity and cash.

The roadmap for success addressed a wide range of questions for how CLC should proceed:

• What business should CLC be in? Ingredient supplier to bakeries, licensor of technology to bakeries, or a CPG bread brand?
• Which markets are the most attractive and how should we sequence an approach to each market? The bread market is quite diverse and the technology also applied to pasta, pet foods, and a variety of other food products.
• Within the priority markets, which companies should be the focus of business development? Differences in product line and approach to product development made some companies a better fit for the CLC product.
• What should a business development process look like? How do you get a new ingredient introduced into the product development process?
• What resources (people and capital) will CLC need to execute the go-forward strategy?

This project is ongoing, but initial steps have been taken to build CLC’s long-term success including the hiring of an expert in food technology science as well as an independent evaluation of the product. The information from the third-party laboratory will help the team to develop a strong pitch for seed investors as well as a go-to-market plan.

Maven Associates works on projects of various sizes and complexities, but in all of them, it works closely with the management team to chart an exciting path forward.

Maven’s relationship with Anchor was well-established, as they’d worked together previously on several different companies. 

When an investor wants to sell a business, they do everything possible to make the business as attractive as it can be to potential investors, especially as they get closer to exit. The actions taken are, often, cosmetic. Think of it as a real estate agent hiring a home stager to make a house look as lovely as possible, without fixing the foundation cracks or drafty windows. 

Private equity firms typically look at various data points to determine the value of a business. Lower customer concentration, growth in end markets, and higher EBITDA margins all lead to higher exit multiples. Preparing a business for sale within 12 months of the sale means that an investor can do very little to substantially change those variables—which means it can do very little to increase the sale price of the business. But by being thoughtful and working proactively to learn which issues will increase or decrease price at the earliest stages of the investment, a company can work proactively to build a business that’s highly valuable to potential buyers. 

The first phase of strategy Maven executed for Anchor was to reverse the traditional process by researching, shortly after Anchor purchased the new businesses, which data points would be most important to potential future buyers. With this information in hand, Anchor has a lead time of years—rather than months—to build a business that will be most attractive to potential buyers.  

The second phase of strategy was more traditional: Maven worked with Anchor to find ways to scale the business effectively. Maven did this by researching where the businesses currently fit in the market and by strategizing where there were potential growth opportunities, and which practices should be more integrated.

The questions Maven worked with Anchor to answer illustrate an important reason to work with a third-party consultant: sometimes it’s more profitable and efficient to rethink how things are always done. 

Average stores have 120,000 sq ft of retail space and carry 50,000 skus.  Originally operating as Garden Ridge Pottery the company was purchased by AEA Investors in 2011 and has undergone a massive turnaround and transformation.  It was renamed At Home in 2014 and went public in 2016.

At Home has been a remarkably successful turnaround.  Part of that success was having a solid 5 year plan and executing on that plan.  As 2016 came to a close, At Home was nearing the end of their original 5 year plan and needed to look forward to the next 5 years.  A key part of that forward look was having a strong understanding of the competitive landscape.

Maven Associates was engaged to develop detailed profiles of 20 competitors and to assess where At Home stood in the broad competitive landscape. Thru a combination of online research, store visits and extensive interviews, Maven was able to provide a clear view of At Home’s position in the retail home décor market.  Several opportunities to close gaps with competitors were identified and prioritized.

With boats ranging in size from 20ft to 40ft and an average selling price of $120k, Cobalt’s distinctive boats can be seen on lakes and harbors throughout the world. A second generation family business, Cobalt Boats is the perfect blend of manufacturing prowess and artisanship.

The market for stern drive boats (ie boats with the motor in the boat and prop in the rear of the boat) has been in a long-term decline with boat ownership shifting to pontoon boats and outboard motors.  Cobalt was looking for an outside advisor to help them chart a course for the sustained profitable growth of the business.

Maven Associates completed an extensive strategic review of the boating market and Cobalt’s position in the market.  Thru customer interviews and a large customer survey, research and analysis on the boating market and conversations with the Cobalt dealer network, Maven was able to develop a strategic roadmap for the executive team.

“We wanted outside help in building a growth strategy. They challenged our thinking and provided pragmatic and actionable recommendations. We enjoyed working with the Maven team and highly recommend them.”

Paxson St. Clair
CEO, Cobalt Boats

Serving the laundromat, healthcare, hotel and commercial laundry industries, Alliance manufactures large washers and dryers of all sizes.  With manufacturing facilities in the US and Europe, Alliance operates under the brands Speed Queen, UniMac, Primus, Huebsch and IPSO.

With the rapid success of Uber, venture capital investments in Uber “like” start ups surged in 2014 and 2015.  One industry that received investment was the dry cleaning and laundry industry, with app providers offering pick-up and delivery to a home or office, all coordinated thru an app.  Alliance wanted outside perspective and analysis on whether the rise of the app providers was a threat or an opportunity.

Maven completed a thorough review of the laundry and dry cleaning app market and provided a fact-based point of view on the immediate future of the market.

It had built a solid industry position in both banking and insurance, but had not yet seen significant participation in the rapidly growing Financial Technology space (FinTech). With the decline in manufacturing and heavy industry, the state is actively identifying and pursuing market sectors that provide significant opportunity for jobs and economic growth in the new economy.

The client hired Maven to look specifically at the FinTech market. We executed three aspects of the project:

1. Understanding the global FinTech market space and the attractiveness of each sub-segment within FinTech,
2. Benchmarking of the state’s existing asset base relative to FinTech industry leaders,
3. Assessing the potential FinTech opportunity for the state in terms of jobs and economic growth.

Through the course of the project, the Maven team drew heavily upon its expertise in market assessment as well as two deep subject matter experts in FinTech brought in specifically for this project. We recommended the agency immediately begin a four-pronged approach to building a FinTech sector in the state:

1. Recruiting FinTech scale-ups – companies who are in high-cost cities and need to scale in a more affordable location,
2. Enlist large financial services corporations to collaborate on helping to build the FinTech ecosystem,
3. Build a FinTech ecosystem, including a state sponsored, FinTech Accelerator to attract and spur FinTech startups, corporate sponsors and investment sponsors,
4. Promote regulatory changes to streamline regulations in the state to make it an advantageous location for FinTech companies.

The client is actively executing the strategy the Maven team laid out.

The Maven team conducted a growth strategy project for us and the quality of their work was as good or better than that from the top tier strategy firm we’ve hired previously. They provide great value for mid-market companies and I highly recommend them.”

Starting in 1980, Dupré has provided services to a range of industries including energy, chemicals, consumer packaged goods and manufacturing.  In the past 30 years, Dupré has grown to become one of the top 50 logistics companies in the United States.

Like many companies of its size, Dupré has experienced periods of rapid growth followed by challenging plateaus. By 2009 it had grown into a $120M business, but found itself at a plateau and in need of strategy and priority adjustments.  In early 2010, the Dupré Executive Leadership team made the difficult decision to seek an external advisor to help chart a strategic course for the coming years.

Over a six month period, Maven Associates worked with the broad management team at Dupré to develop a detailed corporate strategy that would help guide the company past the plateau and into a period of growth.  Components of the corporate strategy included a review of broad industry trends, a detailed customer survey and customer segmentation, an analysis of customer-level profitability and development of a prioritized set of growth initiatives.  The final outcome of Maven’s strategic plan was a detailed set of recommendations the Dupré team was able to begin implementing immediately.

Over the subsequent 4 years, Dupré has experienced a new period of rapid growth with revenues reaching $220M in 2014.

PCC’s cloud based software is a comprehensive billing and operations platform for skilled nursing, assisted living and critical care facilities. PointClickCare is a portfolio company of JMI Equity.

PCC is the dominant player in the long term care software market. It’s software is used by most of the largest long term care facilities in North America. In contrast, PCC had historically struggled to grow the independent (single facility) segment of the market. Maven was engaged to help the PCC executive team develop a strategy for increasing the growth of that independent market.

The project centered around a large scale survey of all long term care providers, both large and small. The goal was to understand, at a detailed level, how the needs of large long-term care companies differed from smaller companies.

Through analysis of the survey, the team was able to provide practical recommendations for changes to pricing, marketing, product configuration and implementation that led to significant growth.