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Found this out on the BYOC forum. Doesn’t appear to be a rumor. Really will be losing a major source of parts for us pedal builders.
That’s terrible news. I am just getting started at pedal building and place fairly large an order with them a few days ago. I was really looking forward to doing more business with them.
I would not panic. Steve is retiring after 20 years of running a successful business.
Key word successful.
If you do not think somebody is taking that over in full stride then I would think again. Everybody loves drama.
If you think about it why would anyone give up a fully stocked, successful business you ran for 20 years and had a huge customer base. Well you wouldn’t because that is a cash cow and would fund your retirement.
On the BYOC board one of the moderators stated that Steve Daniels, apparently the man responsible for Small Bear, called him and told him he is retiring. Hopefully he will sell his business, but there is no word yet that anyone is taking over the business.
By the way, it is the BYOC board that brought me to GuitarPCB. That board is another good source of information for pedal building in addition to the forum here, which is also excellent and chock full of information.
I hope you are right Barry, and someone takes over the business. If they do, though, prices could be going up.
Well I saw a post on Instagram from Steve and it appears he is going to stay open till they sell out of everything and then close.
That literally makes no sense to me because of the customer database alone which took 22 years to build would be worth a pretty penny all by itself (and maybe that is what is happening). Anyway it’s really too bad there would not be a continuance of some sort because I am certain there is a market for it.
Barry. Do you think you might take on some of the components Small Bear sells? Like more footswitches, pots, jacks and enclosures?
Small Bear was my main source for Ge transistors. Hopefully GuitarPCB can provide more of these, but as available hard to find stocks dwindle I think that this would be a difficult proposition for Barry.
So he is selling… because of course he is.
If you are looking to get in on the business and have an extra cool 7 figures laying around I would give him a call.
Well at least the company is up for sale and hopefully someone will take it over. It likely will take some time as there are usually negotiations. In a 7 figure sale, the buyer will probably have to get some financing, maybe from the seller. I have been through this before as a principal shareholder in a small company so I know how these things can go.
And things can go bad along the road potentially derailing a deal. Somebody leaked the information we were selling and our five biggest clients decided to leave, so our original deal had to be renegotiated leaving us with less favorable terms. We think the leak came from the buyers, a billion dollar company, but we had no way to prove it in a court of law, so we settled for a lower sale amount. Interestingly, those clients are back with the company.
So I hope there are no glitches along the way and we won’t even notice the transition from old to new owner. But you never know. The company could be sold and the stock of parts absorbed by the new entity without being offered for sale.
I dropped in on the storefront of the company that took over Small Bear last week. It’s essentially a warehouse with a small showroom. They are still getting the Small Bear inventory integrated into their own, but this is not their first rodeo.
The owner has bought a number of small companies over the years and kept their offerings alive. They pulled a couple of Bare Box 1 and Bare Box 2 out of the stock room for me, but asked that I order online for local pickup in the future. But they are solid people and keeping Small Bear alive.
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