May 2025

Real Clients, Real Stories – Sale of Mayfield Group

M&A The Inside Story – What’s it Really Like to Sell a Company – Sale of Mayfield Group

Part of our Real Clients, Real Stories Series. In this video Mike and Debbie Jarmey recount their experience of the sale of Mayfield Group – producer / supplier of high-quality decking, which sold to Epwin Group Plc.

In this conversation, Mike and Debbie Jarmey, former owners of The Mayfield Group, discuss their journey of selling their business, The Mayfield Group, with Justin Levine, MD, TheNonExec and Nick Davies, Partner, Steele Raymond.

They highlight the importance of choosing the right advisors, emphasising the personal and supportive approach they received during the process. They describe the emotional challenges, the duration of the sale, and how essential it was to have a trusted partner guiding them.

The narrative underscores that while selling a 30-year-old business is a complex and often emotional journey, having the right support can make the experience far more manageable and positive.

• The Mayfield Group started as a caravan decking business and grew into a successful national business, but eventually reached a ceiling where the owners felt it was time to sell.
• With the help of advisors Justin Levine and Nick Davies, Mike & Debbie carefully planned their exit over several years, bringing in new management and making the business “match fit” for sale.
• The sale process was emotionally and physically draining, but the couple prioritised finding the right buyer who would retain their employees and dealer network.
• The couple credit the personal, supportive approach of their advisors as key to their successful exit, noting that they felt “held” through the challenging process.

Quick find timeline:

00:00: Introduction – Sale of Mayfield Group
00:31: Objective – Real clients Mike & Debbie Jarmey, Real story of their business sale process
00:55: Debbie Jarmey, The Mayfield Group, and why it was time to sell
01:21: The Mayfield Group, background
01:47: Achieved & maintained national presence
01:54: Reasons for success; reputation, product quality
02:11: Trigger point for deciding to exit
02:27: Next level opportunity meant seeking a trade buyer
03:09: Alternative exit routes considered; succession / management buyout (MBO) / employee ownership (EoT)
04:05: Other considerations; protecting employees / team / dealers
04:33: Why finding the right fit was vital
05:11: Realising the business had value
05:18: Value was in the strategic fit for other industries
05:35: Key step – business was self-sufficient, self-funding
05:52: Getting match fit
06:13: Overcoming hurdles, finding direction and exit planning
06:47: Managing the challenging process
06:59: Team effort to prepare the business for sale
07:27: Finding an excellent buyer & managing the due diligence (DD) process
08:24: The emotional toll of due diligence
08:57: Personal & professional support throughout was invaluable
10:41: Confidentiality and deciding to involve the team
12:53: Patience and clarity on reasons for exit
13:22: Putting a management team in place & stepping back
14:06: Advice to business owners considering selling a business
15:08: The edge, working with TheNonExec and Steele Raymond

Meet your M&A experts

Nick Davies, Partner | M&A Solicitor, Steele Raymond LLP Solicitors

Nick acts for a wide range of business clients across various sectors, advising on complex corporate transactions including company sales, purchases and mergers. Nick also advises on on mergers, de-mergers and re-organisation.

Justin Levine – Managing Director, TheNonExec M&A Boutique

Justin leads a boutique exit advisory firm specialising in manufacturing, technology, IT, digital, healthcare, wholesale and distribution markets. With the support of a 15-strong virtual team of analysts and researchers, he helps private business owners with growth and exit strategies.

CONTACTS:

TheNonExec Limited
Contact us here to chat about your business exit.

Steele Raymond LLP
Richmond Point, 43 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, BH2 6LR
steeleraymond.co.uk

Transcript for video: Sale of Mayfield Group

Introduction – Sale of Mayfield Group

Mike Jarmey:
It’s for anybody selling a business. The only resounding thing I could say is do it with the right company to help you do it with the right people involved. And it doesn’t come any higher recommendation than you guys. I’m sure that there are other companies out there that do what you guys do. I just don’t know they would’ve done it in the way that you helped us do it.

It wasn’t so much a business thing. That’s how it felt to me. It was much more of, look, we are your friends. We’re here to help. Whatever it is, we’ll get through this and get to the other side. I think that’s what made the difference is the personal approach.

Objective – Real clients Mike & Debbie Jarmey, Real story of a business sale process

Justin Levine:
So Mike, Debbie, welcome. Thanks for joining us. You built a business, The Mayfield Group. We want to understand a little bit about the process of how you sold your business and experiences and the emotional highs and the emotional lows that you went through in selling your company. It was a fairly long process, wasn’t it? Which one of you would like to tell us a little bit about the business and a little bit about the background?

Debbie Jarmey, Sale of Mayfield Group and why it was time to sell

Debbie Jarmey:
So the business initially formed in 1989. Fundamentally it was for caravan decking and it grew quite organically to be a national business. We had dealers all over the country. We had lots of people buying directly from us, but then it had grown to a point where it was still a family business, but almost too big to be a family business. And the effort that it took to run it was significantly more as each year grew, and that was one of the problems.

The Mayfield Group, background

Justin Levine:
So just run me. How many decades was that, the Business?

Debbie Jarmey:
30

Justin Levine:
30 years.

Debbie Jarmey:
For the first seven years there was no one else. There wasn’t another company doing it. And then suddenly out of nowhere, the caravan industry that we serviced had gone from being mom and pop’s caravans into these huge chalets and then we had competition and a lot of it.

Achieved & maintained national presence

Nick Davies:
But you coped well with that. I mean, you maintained a national presence, as you say, up and down the country for a variety of parks.

Reasons for success; reputation, product quality

Mike Jarmey:
I mean, we set the bar really high and because it gained reputation, people liked the product, they didn’t have to go back to it. It did what it said on the tin and it grew from that. I would say that the product quality was a fundamental success of that business.

Trigger point for deciding to exit

Nick Davies:
Owning and running a successful business as you did and developing it and growing it, how did you reach the point of deciding that you maybe wanted to look at an exit or something similar to an exit? What were the trigger points or kind of considerations that you had to reach that decision?

Next level opportunity meant seeking a trade buyer

Mike Jarmey:
I felt we hit a ceiling with the business, and to get to where we got to took a huge amount of effort to go around the country, training up these installers, setting up these dealerships, and because of the types of products we were using, we were then beginning to see them in the building industry and for us to then break into a different market would’ve been tough.

What became obvious was actually there were plenty of decent sized companies out there, which were already in the building industry, which know it. So what we looked at was actually partnering with a business that could take our products and then slide them into their product line and hopefully the business would grow from there.

Alternative exit routes considered; succession / management buyout (MBO) / employee ownership (EoT)

Nick Davies:
You sound quite clear there, Mike, that it was going to be a trade sale to a trade buyer. Did you ever consider whether there were other forms of exit available to you? Did you think about whether you would look at, I don’t know, succession within the family or a management buyout or an employee ownership group, or was it always quite clear to you that it would be a trade buyer for the reasons you described?

Mike Jarmey:
It was for me, but I had to say that Justin really opened my eyes because this whole journey right from the start, when Deb and I looked at this, I mean we didn’t really have any idea. I mean, I kind of knew what Deb wanted to achieve. I knew what I wanted to achieve and really for someone to come along who gave all the options, Justin was brilliant at that. So these are the options. We could do all of the aforementioned, we could do MBO, we could look to sell out to maybe one of your competitors or we could find a fit for this business. What is it you want? So he really helped us along that journey.

Other considerations; protecting employees / team / dealers

Debbie Jarmey:
It was really important that when we left the business, it was left in good hands and the people that had worked really hard to get us there we’re protected. So the competitor thing wasn’t it for me, because they would’ve taken the territories that they’d got and given it to their own people. So that while it may have been easier wasn’t an option. The company that bought it kept all the dealers in place, they’re all still working, they’re all still growing their family businesses, because that’s what they were, and to leave with that good feeling was the only way to leave.

Why finding the right fit was vital

Justin Levine:
I think that’s probably quite an important point because that’s the impression that I had with your business, that the employees, your team, your dealers, all of the infrastructure you built up were terribly important to you. And that must have been quite a stretch to think about selling the business, to think that it was a part where you were going to sell it and leave it, or was that not an issue?

Debbie Jarmey:
You had to think of it as a marriage. So we were allowing the business… It was now 30 and it was time it got married, so we found it a partner, but it wasn’t about the money. The money was great and everything, but it wasn’t about that. It was about putting it in the right place so that we could walk away and still sleep nights.

Realising the business had value

Justin Levine:
I’m curious, was there a point on your journey, I mean it’s a long time you built the business, but at what point do you think there was value in the Business?

Value was in the strategic fit for other industries

Mike Jarmey:
We had good products that worked in lots of different environments. If you look probably not too far from here, we put the; sold decking to the installers that installed it in houses around here. So to have a product that is widely accepted in a different industry is something a little bit special really.

Key step – business was self-sufficient, self-funding

Debbie Jarmey:
I think also having a healthy bank account, so you’re not in debt, you don’t owe anybody, you’re not always on the back foot. So you’re suddenly thinking, well, this makes good money. This is now a business that’s sustaining itself. We didn’t have any loans, we didn’t have any problems. And you’re thinking, well, that’s attractive now.

Getting match fit

Nick Davies:
Was it deliberate that Deb? In terms of reaching that point where the business was self-sufficient, self-funding, didn’t have any debt, had you made a decision earlier to say, we want to get match fit up to that point to make us the most marketable we can be? That’s quite hard to achieve, I would think, in terms of the decisions that you’ve got to make and so on.

Overcoming hurdles, finding direction and exit planning

Debbie Jarmey:
I think, again, go back to Justin. We’d had a thing a few years before and Justin said, you’re not quite there yet. This is what you need to do. So we just cracked on with it, because if you’ve got no direction and you don’t know what you need to do, you sort of just doing the thing you do every day.

Suddenly you gave us the reason to look at it and to look at it in a different way and look at it. Why is that working? Why doesn’t that work? What do you do to make that work better? And it was really interesting, wasn’t it? Suddenly we were just selling more, putting more money away, making everything tidier, something that we probably should have done. But when you’re working, you’re just working.

Nick Davies:
Yup

Managing the challenging process

Debbie Jarmey:
You don’t look outside the parameters of what you’re doing every day. And when we came to sell it, poor Mike was left with all the facts and figures and I just kept working to try and keep the business as busy and as profitable as it could be.

Team effort to prepare the business for sale

Justin Levine:
But it was a team effort and it worked quite well.

Debbie Jarmey:
Absolutely.

Justin Levine:
It worked well.

Debbie Jarmey:
Yes.

Mike Jarmey:
Well, and I think you can both include yourselves in that team because there’s things that we just wouldn’t have been able to achieve without both you Justin and both Nick from Steele Raymond. I mean, it was incredible what we actually got through to get to that business, into the shape that we needed to get it into to sell it. It’s not to say that there was anything wrong with it, it’s just that the package we had wasn’t going to sell in the marketplace we wanted sell it into.

Finding an excellent buyer & managing the due diligence (DD) process

Nick Davies:
Yeah, it took a little bit of time, didn’t it? We have a bit of a plan, but we sat down and looked at it together and said, right, what have we got to fix? And I think it was Justin said, give it a couple of years, and we followed that plan. We went back to market.

As you say, Justin put another excellent listed, I think PLC buyer to the table who, in testament to what you had built up over the years, loved your business and because of the work we’d done over the last couple of years, you were then match fit and ready to go and we had a good process. But how did you feel once the process got going and you were kind of right?

We’ve got heads of terms second time round. We’re on that journey. How is managing the legal process, due diligence, share sale and purchase agreements, big documents, quite a lot of volume to process. You’re also trying to run the business. You’re also trying to manage your emotions of selling a business that you’ve built up over 30 years. That’s got to be quite an intense period.

The emotional toll of due diligence

Mike Jarmey:
Draining. Absolutely exhausting. I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted from work in my life. The emotional side and the effort it took doing the due diligence both on the legal side and the accountancy side of it. Every day, it was just… I used to come home absolutely exhausted didn’t I?

Debbie Jarmey:
Because I chose not to get involved in that. I made a conscious decision that it was going to be so deep and so involving that I’d have to ask him to do it. And I said, look, I’m going to just keep doing the business. We need to keep it strong. We need to keep it healthy. We need to keep it going.

Personal & professional support throughout was invaluable

Mike Jarmey:
For someone who has to do that on their own, I mean, that would be tough. That’d be really hard work.

But again, beyond you Nick, other people in Steele Raymond, Shaun I’ll mention was just absolutely brilliant. I could pick up the phone to him anytime of day, and say, Shaun, what I do here, give me the guidance and it’d be done. And it was so nice having that person at the end of the phone, being able to answer on the due diligence side of it, on everything else to do with the business.

Then again, Justin… The other nice thing is that it wasn’t right. We’re going to take this business and we’re going to sell it for you. Yeah, it was every day there was conversations, good verbal communication. Justin would be in, I don’t know, probably once a month would pop in. So face to face sit down, and it was so nice to have that support there.

Nick Davies:
It’s hard for people who haven’t been through a process of that type to have an appreciation of the volume of questions, for example, that are asked. The volume of detail, quite historical sometimes, and you sort of think, well, why do they need to know that?

But the reality is a buyer’s going to write a check for a significant sum. They want to know everything about the history, whether it appears relevant to us or not. So I like to try to explain to sellers that that is a challenging process to time manage. It is great as a team that right, I’ll keep the ship sailing, I’ll keep running the business. You focus on that. Not everybody has that, I think, and I think that must be particularly difficult.

Mike Jarmey:
Yeah, I mean, I guess for anybody selling the business, the only resounding thing I could say is do it with the right company to help you do it with the right people involved and it doesn’t come any higher recommendation than you guys.

Nick Davies:
That’s kind Mike, thank you.

Confidentiality and deciding to involve the team

Debbie Jarmey:
I think for us as well, and I think you are aware of that, we’ve made people at work aware of what we were doing and the reasons for doing it. So nobody felt that we were doing it underhand, and a lot of people helped with certain things because they knew we were selling the business for the good of the business.

I think it must be difficult for people who are selling the business and maybe can’t tell their staff or don’t tell their staff, because then you’re isolated again. So I think anyone who’s selling a business and it involves other people, needs to make a decision of how they’re going to do it before they do it.

We sat down with all our people and said, look, we are going to be selling the business, but it’s to a business that will help you grow and take you on. Because we’re not going to be here forever, but these people will be. So it was a case of taking them on the journey as well.

Justin Levine:
That’s quite important that because a lot of business owners don’t tell their employees what is happening. They prefer not to.

And often they’ll ask us for advice to say, what do you recommend as an advisor? And the generic advice is, well, if you don’t need to tell anybody, don’t tell them.

Especially in the process where you don’t have a buyer, because there’s quite a long period where you are having conversations with people. So there’s no certainty whether you’re going to find a buyer, whether you’re going to get the right offer.

But I would say probably a third of my clients do tell their employees, and to date, over the past 15 years, I’ve never seen that cause any collateral damage. What was your experience? Did it cause any collateral damage where any employees… did any employees leave?

Mike Jarmey:
No. I think if anything, there was a bit of a buzz, bit of excitement. So if you’re in a business day to day and the same thing’s happening day after day after day, suddenly you’ve got something that’s happening, which is new.

So who is this company and how’s it going to work and what are we, are there going to be more job opportunities? So yeah, lots of questions. There was a real buzz about the place, wasn’t there?

Debbie Jarmey:
And people were interested because I had made it obvious that I was going to retire. So there was that. They had that first that they knew that I was going. And then I think the reassurance that a new company was coming in was actually better. I wasn’t just going to go and what was going to happen. They knew there was a route to what was going to go and their future was more secure.

Patience and clarity on reasons for exit

Justin Levine:
If you had to rerun it, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently if anything?

Mike Jarmey:
There’s probably not much I would change. It was so good. The process, although it is long-winded, there’s no quick way of doing it. And you’ve got to find the right buyer and you’ve got to sit down and you’ve got to be doing it for the right reasons. And we were doing it for the right reasons. We wanted to find the right buyer and we hit the target

Debbie Jarmey:
And the only issues we had had been caused by us anyway. There were early days that we didn’t understand. Again, we were learning as we were going along.

Putting a management team in place & stepping back

Mike Jarmey:
I think for me, one of the most important elements that we probably haven’t discussed is actually Deb and I at one point were so heavily involved in the business that Justin, you very early on said, listen, you’ve got to draw yourself back from the business because if we’re looking for buyers, they’re not buying you guys. They’re buying the business, and it has to be an engine running on its own. So we had to find a replacement for Debbie, had to find a replacement for me and step back day by day, and that

Debbie Jarmey:
Took time off.

Mike Jarmey:
That’s quite tough.

Debbie Jarmey):
I went down to three days a week,

Nick Davies:
I remember,

Debbie Jarmey:
And to then take the time out slowly. It was actually, so when we did finish work and we were leaving the business, we thought, yeah, he’s doing that now. She’s doing that now. Yeah, we can go.

Advice to business owners considering selling a business

Nick Davies:
Part of the advice then you would give peers who are considering selling a business is having that plan that’s 2, 3, 4, maybe years out from when you want to exit. Right, build up the second tier of management, start going down to four days, three days. Have your plan of how you’re going to get there over that time period. Look at becoming self-funding, look at all these various other things that you’ve mentioned, and just getting that plan in place and working towards it.

Mike Jarmey:
Yeah, 100%. And it’s not an easy thing to do, you need to almost for a business to be told to do that because, in a way you’re in it. You don’t realise that. But actually, if the shoe was on the other foot and I was buying a business, I would want to see it running on its own merits with its own staff, without the owners involved.

Justin Levine:
Obviously, we’re sat here today because Nick and I guided you through a process in selling your company, so you’ve had the experience of both of us. So if it hadn’t have been Nick and I and it was another set of people guiding you through, do you think you’d have achieved the same result?

The edge, working with TheNonExec and Steele Raymond

Mike Jarmey:
I’m sure that there are other companies out there that do what you guys do. I just don’t know. They would’ve done it in the way that you helped us do it. It wasn’t so much a business thing. That’s how it felt to me is, look, this isn’t a business transaction. Although it was ultimately for me, it was much more of, look, we’re your friends. We’re here. We’re here to help. Whatever it is, we’ll get through this and get to the other side. And we got a really good connection as people, we get on really well. I think that’s what made the difference is the personal approach that your thumbprint was on with us.

Justin Levine:
I mean, these projects, what we do is means an awful lot to us personally. Hopefully that thumbprint, if you like, is embedded across the whole outcome. That you find a great buyer that likes the business, the experience for you that you felt held. It’s a bit of an emotional word, but that you felt held through the process. Listen, thanks to you both.

Nick Davies:
Thanks for your time.

Mike Jarmey:
Thank you both. You helped us achieve what we set out to do.

Debbie Jarmey:
Yeah, we’re having a great life now. Thank you.

Justin Levine:
Teamwork. Teamwork. Thank you.

Tags: company, company sale, DD, Debbie Jarmey, decking, due diligence, Epwin Group Plc., exit, Inside Story, M&A, manufacturing, Mayfield Group, mergers and acquisitions, Mike Jarmey, Nick Davies, sell, Steele Raymond