Investment Thesis
We buy great companies with room to modernize.
Across our team’s operating history, the technology and systems upgrade always arrived late, usually in year four or five, after the easier value had already been captured by hand.
HarborWind exists to move that step to the front of the hold. We buy sound, profitable companies and begin the modernization work early in the hold, then compound the result over years rather than quarters.
What we look for
Where does your company sit?
We buy a specific kind of business, and these are the four things we look at, each written around the company you actually run. If most of them fit and one is off, we are still interested. Mark the ones that sound like yours as you read.
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One
Your earnings
Are your earnings in our range?
$2M–$8M EBITDA. Revenue Above $10M. 15% to 25%+ margin.
We look for established businesses of real substance, where annual operating profit sits in this range and the company turns a healthy share of its sales into profit.
EBITDA is the cash profit your business makes from its operations, before interest, taxes, and accounting adjustments. Margin is the share of each sales dollar that becomes profit.
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Two
Your track record
Have you been profitable for years?
Three or more consecutive profitable years
We are drawn to proven, steadily profitable companies rather than turnarounds or early-stage stories. A record you can point to, year after year, is the strongest signal we look for.
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Three
Your geography
Are you based in the United States?
United States. Midwest and Eastern U.S. preferred.
We invest in U.S. companies, with a preference for the Midwest and the Eastern United States. Staying close to the businesses we own is part of how we remain useful to them.
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Four
Your sector
Are you in a sector we know?
Niche Manufacturing. Specialty Chemicals. Industrial and Essential B2B Services.
We stay in three sectors we know well. Within them, the strongest fits share a way of doing business we look closely at, described just below.
Specialty chemicals are made in smaller, customized batches for a specific technical purpose, such as an adhesive or coating built for one customer. Essential B2B services are so woven into how a customer operates that switching providers is slow and costly.
Read down the four and mark what fits. Whenever you are ready, see where you land. There is no wrong answer here, and nothing is shared.
Also true of the companies we back
We buy platforms and add-ons, back founder transitions, and partner with management teams on buyouts. We are long-term holders with no mandatory exit timeframe. We measure each company by the multiple of capital it returns over the hold.
A platform is the first company we buy in a sector; an add-on is a smaller company folded into it later to grow it. A founder transition is buying from an owner who is stepping back. A management buyout is the existing leadership team partnering with us to buy the company.
Buy. Build. Compound.
The business model
Beyond the numbers?
Two companies can post the same figures and have very different valuations. In specialty chemicals especially, three questions decide whether a business controls its own future.
It owns its formulas, designs, and IP
We buy companies that own the actual recipe or blueprint for what they make, not only the factory that makes it. A company that manufactures someone else’s formula for a fee, called toll or contract manufacturing (the manufacturer does not own the recipe, so the customer can take it elsewhere), does not control its own product and is a pass, however healthy the numbers look.
Its distributors add real value
A distributor is a middleman who buys and resells a product. Distribution works for us when the distributor does something valuable beyond moving boxes: testing, custom blending, holding special licenses, or technical service that makes them hard to swap out. Pure pass-through trading is a pass.
Its supply and availability hold up
The business is not dependent on one fragile, single source for a key input. When a critical material has only one supplier, the whole company inherits that supplier’s risk.
What we avoid
Turnarounds in freefall, startups, real estate, retail, and pure technology or software-only businesses.
After we close
The value work starts in the first year
We call our playbook HALO. It sounds technical, but the idea is simple. Every improvement you can make in a business does one of three things. It helps the business do more, sell more, or spend less. Everything we do after closing rolls up to one of those three. HALO is our name for the structured work we run to create value once we own a business.
Most of that work aims at one number: gross margin. Paper batch records, decades-old ERP systems, manual labeling, and untapped formulation libraries are operational drag, and AI and digital tooling can convert that drag into margin. The lever is either taking cost out of what it takes to make the product, or making sure the company is actually paid what its work is worth.
Gross margin is what is left of each sales dollar after the direct cost of making the product, so it is the clearest measure of whether the work of the business is paying. An ERP, or enterprise resource planning system, is the central software a company runs on: orders, inventory, purchasing, and accounting in one place.
How it lands after we close
The first thirty days, we listen and change nothing, learning the business from the people who run it. Then we map what we found. In the first ninety days we take two or three quick wins, low cost and real impact, and that cash and credibility fund the bigger efforts, the new systems and the plant work that take longer. And then it compounds. Every win makes the next one easier.
Two examples of what that looks like
A batch record is the paper log a plant fills out every time it makes a product: what went in, who signed off. On paper it is a binder nobody can search. We make it a screen you can search in seconds. Or pricing: most of these companies have years of sales data showing which customers and products are underpriced. We use it to stop leaving money on the table. Small, unglamorous, and they add up.
Rocky’s record
What that record has produced
Before HarborWind, co-founder Rocky Lopez led roughly 17 lower-middle-market industrial acquisitions, 6 platforms and 11 add-ons, sourced, closed, and operated over roughly 14 years. Four of those companies are shown here as the multiple of invested capital each returned.
A multiple is how many times the original investment the eventual sale returned. A 5x means five dollars back for every dollar put in.
- An industrial materials manufacturer, bought near breakeven, held long, and nearly doubled revenue.
- On pace for more than50x
- An industrial services and compliance business, bought directly from its founder and more than doubled revenue.
- 6 to 7x
- An industrial distributor, recapitalized through a downturn and nearly tripled revenue.
- about 5x
- A founder-owned specialty chemicals manufacturer that did not own its product IP, brought fully in-house and roughly doubled revenue.
- 4 to 5x
Results reflect prior-firm transactions led by a HarborWind partner. Sectors and multiples only, with no company names or dollar figures. The first HarborWind-branded acquisition closes in 2026.
Why owners choose us
A long-term path for what you built
HarborWind offers a long-term partner that compounds what you built, with your people, customers, and identity intact.
The first conversation is confidential, unhurried, and without obligation. We reply within one business day.
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