Selling Your Catalog: Prepare for the End Game

In a financial end game, earnings are the primary thing that matters. A catalog owner may believe that the catalog has creative, product or market dominance—and those aspects do add value. But earnings are the most important founding element of the transaction.

I’ve seen numerous catalogs that are exquisite from a creative point of view, but they have no earnings. They have no value outside the assets of inventory and receivables. No investor or strategic buyer is going to pay $4 million for a catalog doing $4 million in sales with zero earnings, regardless of how nice the catalog looks. The business has little value without earnings.