Jesús González is past retirement age and is tired. When he returned from summer vacation, he hung the “For Transfer” sign in the bar he runs in central Madrid. Since then, many community members have asked him about selling the business. But no one was interested enough to replace him at the helm of this institution with an employee who has worked in the neighborhood for more than 40 years. There are no programs like Reempresa or NegoziOn yet in the Community of Madrid. The first and pioneering company has been operating in Catalonia since 2011 and is managed by the Cecot business association with the support of, among others, the Generalitat and the Provincial Councils. The second company was launched in Biscay in mid-2022, following in its footsteps once conceived directly by the administration.
The idea is simple. Just as there are platforms that connect future couples or homeowners and renters, the creators of these programs have created a digital market where those who want to sell a business (many due to retirement) and those who start a project register want.
“It is good to support the creation of businesses, because entrepreneurship is fashionable.” “However, it was necessary to structure the market for the transfer of existing companies or small family businesses that do not have a generational replacement mechanism and due to the upcoming huge wave of Retirements are in danger of disappearing,” explains Secretary General Oriol Alba. by Cecot. Since the founding of the Reempresa business association, 4,480 SMEs in Catalonia have survived and avoided the loss of 12,500 jobs.
Through this marketplace, the organization not only establishes contact between the parties affected by the transfer, but also accompanies entrepreneurs throughout the entire process, advising them and ensuring the profitability of the transferred companies. It has accompanied 19,400 restart processes and supported more than 10,700 sold companies. “Our goal is to save companies and jobs,” says Alba, adding that they are currently trying to reproduce the model in the Balearic Islands, “but that will take a long time and will only gain momentum in three or five years.” years after its implementation. March†.
With this system, the business risk is significantly lower, he adds. According to Íñigo Calvo, professor at Deusto Business School, one of the great advantages of transferring existing small businesses or companies over starting new ones is in fact their survivability, which triples. After three years, more than 75% of the transferred companies are still open, while only 25% of the newly created companies survive. “Business is more solid,” he adds. At the same time, the disadvantage of these operations outside Catalonia or Bizkaia is pointed out: there is a market failure and the information on the sale of the companies is not discoverable, organized or accessible, which leads to many viable small businesses closing down while a similar business closes opened a few blocks away. “That is why the administrations have to intervene and become a kind of Tinder to mediate and accompany the transmission,” explains the teacher.
The average amount of companies purchased in Catalonia is between 50,000 and 60,000 euros. These are usually shops (33%), catering establishments (31%) and service sector companies (28%), while industrial companies account for barely 5% of the total, which significantly increases the cost of the transfer: between 300,000 and 500,000 Euro. 90% of operations are below 120,000 euros, says Alba, “so between savings, capitalization of unemployment and even deferment of payment by the transferor, they are very accessible amounts,” he estimates.
Tínia Sagaste, in front of the door of the Doctodata headquarters, which she acquired three weeks ago.
Three weeks ago, Tínia Sagaste acquired Doctodata, a comprehensive document management company with 5 employees and a turnover of around 250,000 euros. As a telecommunications engineer with a lot of experience in innovation and entrepreneurship projects, she knows from the start what it costs to start a business, which is why she decided to transfer an existing business whose owner is retiring at the end of the current year. transfer. The entrepreneur, who wants to automate processes and introduce artificial intelligence into mass data management, expects to bill more than 300,000 euros this year and over 500,000 in five years. “This is without the hassle of building a business from scratch, which takes at least three years,” he says. “It is much better to buy an already active company where the partner has a salary from the very first moment.”
In Bizkaia, the Provincial Council supported self-employment projects and the creation of SMEs until it decided to add the transfer of existing companies in order to avoid the closure of established companies and to help solve the demographic problem facing the Basque Country, as explained PSOE deputy Teresa Laespada . NegoziOn is a program with which the regional employment agency examines the company to be transferred, creates a viability plan and accompanies both parties during the transfer. Since its inception, it has completed 93 orders and has 373 companies looking for a friend and 650 interested parties on its platform, Laespada continues. The State Council is also offering assistance of up to 20,000 euros to complete the takeover.
Natalia Polak, owner of Oxford Erandio.
High age
The amount of the transfers ranged between 5,000 euros for a hairdresser and 200,000 euros for a hardware and industrial supplier. The service sector is the one that handles 77% of operations; the rest comes from industry and transportation. Most of the companies in the showcase are older than 25 years. Almost 40 in the case of the herbal shop that Karina Silva and her daughter took over in the center of Bilbao after the previous owner retired. This 61-year-old nutritionist was looking for a place to consult. And who would tell him that he was in the store where he had been shopping for 14 years? “For me it is a gift. One of the dreams of my life and it was right in front of me,” he says. Silva claims that “without NegoziOn's support and advice, it would have been more difficult for me to get started.” She applied for two loans of 22,000 euros (the program provides her with 10,000 euros) and although she had doubts at first, she now pleased; Sales have already increased by 20%, he emphasizes.
For those who buy, the advantage is that the company has shown that it is successful, that it is viable, Laespada points out, adding that the process requires less bureaucracy than starting a business. Natalia Polak, a 37-year-old Polish English teacher who bought an existing academy in Erandio last year for 35,000 euros (including labor costs), confirms this. “Buying the student portfolio guarantees me a certain level of success. It gives me confidence that I will survive,” he says. In addition, she became a franchisee in Oxford to attract more students and has already had to hire four teachers. She expects to spend 100,000 euros for the first course, more than twice as much as her predecessor.
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