Jarom Wren·January 29, 2026

The Late 40s Pivot Into Business Buying | Jarom Wren Interview

Jarom Wren spent 20 years in corporate brand management (SC Johnson, working on brands like Ziploc, Pledge, and Scrubbing Bubbles) before discovering ETA at age 47 through a former colleague who had bought a business. Driven by a desire for independence and geographic freedom — crystallized when his employer relocated him to Texas — he spent 18 months researching before leaving his mid-six-figure salary on January 3, 2025 and closing on Vanlife Outfitters just five days later. Vanlife Outfitters is a four-year-old e-commerce retailer selling van conversion parts and accessories (refrigerators, insulation, tables) to DIY van builders, founded as a blog in 2016 and converted to a store in 2020. The deal was complicated by a 20% SDE restatement after his initial LOI, multiple SBA bank rejections (due to e-commerce sector bias, the financial revision, and cash-vs-accrual tax discrepancies), and a loan broker advising him to walk away; Jarom solved it by pegging the purchase price to a QoE-verified multiple (low-to-mid 3x), buying 70% with personal cash plus a small personal-friend investor, and allowing the founders to retain minority equity as advisory partners. One year in, his biggest regret is not prioritizing the e-commerce tech stack, which crashed for 48 hours mid-2025; he launched a new Shopify store in late 2025 and sees 2026 as the growth year, with a second acquisition — likely e-commerce and complementary to Vanlife Outfitters — on the horizon.

Deal facts

multiple: low-to-mid 3x SDE (agreed via QoE-pegged LOI; initial LOI ~4x, revised to ~3.5x after SDE drop)
sde ebitda: SDE ~$750k-$1m (originally just over $1m; dropped ~20% to ~$800k after financials restated; QoE came back ~$50k higher)
financing structure: Cash equity (buyer) + personal friend investor + seller equity rollover (founders retained ~30% combined with friend; buyer acquired 70% control); no SBA loan ultimately (multiple banks declined due to e-commerce, financial restatement, and cash-vs-accrual tax discrepancy)
notes: Closed January 8, 2025. Buyer used personal cash savings (~$350k available) supplemented by a small personal-friend investor. ROBS (Rollover for Business Startups) was considered but not used. Multiple SBA banks declined. Founders (Zach and Josh) retained minority equity and transitioned to advisory/board role. Gross margins in the 30s; net margins 10-15%. Business had high six-figure inventory. QoE cost $10k (numbers-verification tier). Business was founded 2016 as a blog, became a store in 2020.

Why this business

Jarom was drawn to Vanlife Outfitters because of its size (SDE over $1m at first look), its alignment with his personal love of outdoor freedom and camping-adjacent activities, and the poetic match between the freedom he was seeking for himself and the freedom the business sells to its customers. He also believed strongly in the long-term growth of the van life industry as a small but expanding slice of the broader RV market, and was comfortable with e-commerce given his own side business and CPG brand-management background.

What's working

Content and trust moat: four years of educational blog content built before the store launched gives Vanlife Outfitters credibility and SEO presence that Amazon and generic retailers lack
DIY customer need: van conversion buyers are uneducated and actively seeking guidance, making a knowledgeable, content-driven retailer sticky versus Amazon
Remote-operated business gives Jarom the geographic freedom he sought — he can manage from Dallas and will be able to live anywhere after 2030
Founders (Zach and Josh) stayed on as minority equity partners and advisors, providing domain expertise and industry credibility during and after transition
QoE came back ~$50k higher than post-restatement SDE, and founders agreed not to raise the price, giving Jarom an unexpected upside
New Shopify store launched by end of 2025, replacing the crashed legacy platform; Jarom sees 2026 as a growth year after a foundation-building 2025

What's hard

Store crashed and was down for 48 hours in June 2025 and 'limped along' afterward — Jarom admits he deprioritized evaluating the tech stack and calls it a 'D' performance area
Multiple SBA lenders declined the deal (e-commerce sector, 20% SDE restatement, cash-vs-accrual tax filing mismatch), making financing very difficult
Balancing working 'on' vs. 'in' the business as sole managing owner after founders stepped back has been harder than expected
No management layer existed — everyone reported directly to founders; Jarom had to promote three people in his second week and quickly hire additional technical van-life experts
Average orders per customer is only 1.4, meaning repeat-purchase and retention potential is underutilized
Business is only four years old (store launched 2020), so longevity track record is the primary risk; three-year tax history was thin and complicated by growth curve

Notable quotes

I'm renting myself to a corporation. And once that phrase hit me 10 years ago or so, I couldn't get it out of my head.

Everything I'm hearing about says deals want to die. So I can let this die and look for something else or I can just keep attacking because every deal I find is going to want to die.

It just went on sale. And there's fewer buyers. A bunch of my competition has fled.

Don't get ready, get started. And I tend to be a little bit more analytical and thoughtful... but I pushed ahead without knowing everything.