private equity

“So we didn't bring on any investors, even though by 2006, 2007, many people are interested in buying into the brand or investing in the brand. And I had many offers of private equities wanting to get involved. I just didn't see any benefit of it at that time s…”

“The problem with the venture capitalists and the private equity people is that they all thought that because I was an engineer and designer, I knew nothing about making and selling things, and I couldn't possibly make a commercial success of it. So they all tu…”

“The private equity, they're there to make money for their investors, and I had a very long-term vision for Lou Lemon, and they had quite a short-term vision for Lou Lemon. So we went, ah, we ended up going public way too quickly.”

“I really only wanted to sell 30% of the stock to the private equity guys, but I ended up selling 48, so I lost control of the board seats, and I didn't know how to negotiate for them.”

“Everything I saw, and that we saw, of companies that took private equity money, and especially if they sold the majority, They didn't have control anymore, and I, we always joked that the first thing they would do is take that rose essential oil that costs 850…”

“The problem with the venture capitalists and the private equity people is that they all thought that because I was an engineer and designer, I knew nothing about making and selling things, and I couldn't possibly make a commercial success of it. So they all tu…”

“If you are still passionately involved in your business, if you still care, just don't sell the controlling interest to a private equity or a financial institute. Just don't do it. You can sell parts of it, but just don't give away the controlling interest, be…”

“For the last several decades, it's been a very tightly controlled industry, and when things are an oligopoly or a duopoly or a monopoly, that's when you're able to really protect pricing, protect margins, and you see it in other industries. You see it in the r…”

“I get private equity companies coming in and they don't ask me to take their money and grow it. They, the first thing they ask me is how's your health? It feels like they're just waiting for me to keel over.”

“They're the majority. We own a good piece of the minority.”

“So we interviewed over a hundred private equity firms when we chose the, our private equity partners. I'm told nobody's ever interviewed half that many, but it was the most important decision we've ever made”

“Most of these, what I have seen, they write the contract the way it is all in their favor, because you need the money, and they have the money, and they hardly lose money. They take over your business, so you lose your business.”

“I'm not for sale.”

“And so I knew that sort of like going the venture capital private equity route was something we wouldn't do because of what we wanted to do with the brand, how we wanted to do this forever. We didn't really want to sell it.”

“Had we gotten tens of millions of dollars earlier than The downside would have been somebody would have owned 50% of our business. That would have been true. And we could have done that. The upside would have been, we would have been able to build this much mo…”

“One, if you'd looked at their performance generally They've ruined more businesses that they've grown. They just don't, one, they think they're smarter than the owners of people that created the business in the first place. Second, they think they can over lev…”