Ryan DeCaire - What Rapid Growth in Small Business Looks Like - Ep.93
Think Like an Owner
The K1 Midsole Ice Cleat
Geraline is an industrial safety products company. Its main product was called the K1 midsole ice cleat. It's a piece of rubber that sat in the middle of the arch of your foot. When you needed traction you rotated the cleat down underneath the arch ofyour foot.
My guest in this episode is Ryan DeCaire. Ryan joined a private equity firm called Ashbridge Partners in Toronto Canada and became president of one of their portfolio companies, Geroline, in February 2019. Geroline is an industrial safety products company that sells ice cleats to companies in the energy, aerospace, mining, transportation, and construction industries among others. Geroline has a pretty incredible growth story from the time of acquisition in February 2019, when it had low double digits revenue, Ryan and his team doubled the size of Geroline and sold for 10x gross return to investors only 16 months later.
The story of how they did it with sweat and tears will have a familiar theme to anyone in a growing small company. Ryan and I discussed building systems and a growing business, hiring for culture, creating an incentive structure for their team, going to 55 trade shows per year, and all the work needed to handle those leads and the challenges of being a business with only one or a small handful of products.
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