Exit-Readiness CFO Services for UK Consumer Brands

Two to twelve months of sell-side preparation for a UK consumer brand. Clean financials, normalised EBITDA, defensible forecast, and a diligence pack that survives buyer scrutiny.

Why preparation moves the price

Most discounts taken in a consumer brand sale process are not buyer negotiation tactics. They are pre-existing problems made visible. Inventory that turned out to be slower-moving than the forecast assumed. EBITDA that did not normalise as cleanly as the deck implied. Working capital that needed an unexpected injection at close. Customer concentration the founder had not flagged. Each of these is a discount on the headline price. Each one is preventable if the work is done early enough.

Exit readiness is the discipline of finding those problems and either fixing them or pricing them in advance, so the buyer's diligence confirms what the seller already showed rather than revealing surprises.

What is in scope

Historical financial cleanup. Three years of accounts reconciled, restated where necessary, and presented in a buyer-grade format.
EBITDA normalisation. One-off items, owner add-backs, founder compensation, and discretionary spend identified and justified line by line.
Working capital target. Modelled and locked in advance. Most close-day adjustments come from a fight over working capital that should have been resolved earlier.
Defensible three-year forecast. Driver-based, sensitised, and explainable in the buyer call.
Customer and SKU concentration analysis. Pre-empted, not discovered by the buyer.
Inventory health and obsolescence provision. Worked through with the operations team rather than the buyer's accountant.
Diligence pack. Indexed, complete, and ready before the data room opens.
Buyer-specific tailoring. Strategic, PE, aggregator, or family office — preparation tuned to the likely buyer pool.

Working alongside the corporate finance firm

The sell-side mandate sits with a boutique investment bank or corporate finance house. Oro does not compete with that role and does not take a percentage of the sale. We sit alongside the sell-side adviser, take responsibility for the financials, run the diligence Q&A, and free the adviser to focus on positioning and the buyer process. The founder ends up with two people on their side: one running the process, one running the numbers.

Cadence and price

Engagement runs from two months (post-LOI clean-up) to twelve months (pre-mandate readiness). Monthly retainer £6,000 to £12,000 depending on the state of the financials and the active workstream count. A milestone success fee, fixed at the start, payable on close. Total cost typically 0.4 to 0.8 percent of enterprise value, against preparation work that routinely lifts exit price by ten to twenty percent versus running the same process unprepared.

6–18 mo

Lead time that produces the cleanest sell-side process. Six months is the practical minimum.

10–20%

Typical price uplift versus an unprepared process. The discipline of normalisation and pre-emption is what does it.

0.4–0.8%

Of enterprise value as total Oro fee. We are not the sell-side adviser.

Frequently asked questions

When should we start exit readiness?

Twelve months out is ideal. Eighteen if the financials need material cleanup. Six months is the practical minimum; below that you are reacting to diligence rather than pre-empting it.

Is this different from a Quality of Earnings report?

Yes. A QoE is produced by the buyer or a sell-side accountant during the process. Exit readiness happens before. The output of readiness is what makes a future QoE go well.

What buyers do you typically prepare for?

Strategic acquirers (larger consumer brands), private equity (lower mid-market and growth), aggregators (for Amazon-heavy businesses), and the occasional family office. The preparation differs at the margin; the core financial discipline is the same.

Will you run the sale?

No. The sell-side mandate sits with a corporate finance firm or boutique investment bank. We prepare the brand and the financials and we sit alongside the founder through the process.

How does pricing work?

A fixed monthly retainer of £6,000 to £12,000 across the preparation period, plus a milestone success fee on close. Total cost is typically 0.4 to 0.8 percent of enterprise value — a fraction of the value uplift the work creates.

Can you tell us what the brand is worth?

Yes — a benchmarked range, with the multiple drivers explicit and the levers you can pull in the next twelve months to shift it. Not a formal valuation, which is the buyer's job.

Written by William Smithwhite, Founder and Fractional CFO.

Last updated 2026-05-22.