Jesse Sapphire·May 11, 2023

How to Survive Buying a Business When Sales Plunge 95% | Jess Safir Interview

Jesse Sapphire is a former finance professional (Goldman, hedge fund, residential mortgage) who conducted a self-funded search from Philadelphia and acquired ABG Print, a Manhattan-based commercial printing company founded in 1992, in June 2019 for approximately 3.5x EBITDA using an SBA 7(a) loan with minimal equity. The business had $3.5–4m in annual revenue and $1.3m EBITDA serving primarily financial services firms with short-run, fast-turn, high-quality printing for pitch books, roadshows, and conference materials. Nine months after closing, COVID-19 caused revenue to collapse 95% within days as New York's offices emptied; Jesse cut from 22 employees to 4 by March 15, 2020, and survived through PPP, EIDL, aggressive vendor and landlord negotiations, and sheer persistence. The recovery was slow — break-even was not reached until Q4 2022 — and required fundamental diversification away from financial services into fashion, luxury, pharma, and buy-side private equity clients, with wide-format printing becoming a growing segment. By the time of the interview revenue had recovered to $2.5m (2022) en route to a $3m target, still below the pre-COVID base but with a much healthier customer mix. Jesse's central lesson is that genuine passion for ownership only reveals itself under extreme adversity — and that transparent, honest communication with every stakeholder is the key tool when there is no playbook.

Deal facts

multiple: 3.5x EBITDA (approximately)
sde ebitda: EBITDA ~$1.3m
revenue: $3.5m–$4m at acquisition
financing structure: SBA 7(a) loan + ~5% seller note + small equity contribution (~1% own cash) + some investor capital brought in post-LOI
notes: Business founded 1992, located in Manhattan. During closing a bad January caused price renegotiation resulting in lower purchase price. No earnout. Revenue fell to $800k in 2020, was $2.5m in 2022, targeting $3m in 2023. At recording still not back to pre-COVID levels.

Why this business

Jesse was drawn to unsexy, forgettable niches that search fund-backed searchers would avoid — businesses hard to exit and not growing 20-30% annually. He specifically avoided home services and vertical SaaS, instead preferring stable cash flow businesses with long track records. ABG Print had been operating since 1992, survived 9/11 and 2008 with only ~30% revenue hits each time, and offered recurring client relationships in a niche (short-run, fast-turn, high-quality printing for financial services and corporate events) that he saw as defensible. He planned a buy-and-hold strategy of five to ten businesses and wanted a business, not an investment.

What's working

Diversification away from the concentrated financial services base: post-COVID the business now serves fashion, luxury goods, pharma, and buy-side firms (private equity, venture capital) in addition to banks
Wide format printing segment is growing significantly and offsetting decline in traditional small-format work
Volume of jobs increased ~300% even as average job size fell, reflecting the broader industry trend toward shorter runs and faster turnaround
Quick early wins on digital marketing: expanded Google AdWords targeting to include non-NYC searches that included NYC keywords, immediately capturing out-of-town customers planning trips
Transparent, proactive communication with all stakeholders (landlord, SBA lender, suppliers, seller) during COVID preserved relationships and secured payment deferrals and concessions
Tight-knit team culture: remaining employees viewed the company as their own and drove the recovery alongside Jesse
Maintaining 24/7 service availability even at minimal staffing preserved client relationships during the crisis

What's hard

COVID caused a 95% revenue decline within days of the initial shutdown, dropping from ~$3.5m+ run rate to effectively zero
Heavy customer concentration in financial services (NYC office occupancy as a proxy) made the business extremely vulnerable to the specific nature of the pandemic shock
The business had no contractual recurring revenue — relationships were repeat but not locked in, so all revenue evaporated instantly
Had to cut from 22 employees to 4 by March 15, 2020, losing institutional knowledge at the worst possible time
Did not reach steady state or break-even until Q4 2022 — roughly 2.5 years of cash burn and recovery
Relied heavily on PPP, EIDL, Main Street Lending, and payment deferrals just to survive; managing that was itself a full-time job
The specific high-margin projects (large financial services presentations and conference materials) that anchored the business model essentially disappeared permanently and have not returned
Stress-tested the business at 30% downside before acquisition — the banks thought even that was too conservative — reality was 95% down
Over-leverage at acquisition combined with zero revenue created extreme financial pressure and personal guarantee exposure

Notable quotes

I need to cut your jobs now so I can save your career. If we can bring you back, you're going to be a week ahead of everybody else on the unemployment and I know you think I'm nuts and I know you think I'm crazy, but you're going to be able to sign up for unemployment very fast and in about a week's time there's going to be millions of people behind you.

There wasn't a playbook for being down 95% with also call it 80% loss in staff.

You don't really find out what you want to do in life until it doesn't go well. And you know, people would call during the pandemic and say like hey how's it going and I said well we still have the same phone number and I'm having fun getting kicked in the teeth every day.

The number one fear that you have when you're buying a business that exists is that you're gonna screw it all up. What's the change — the only thing that changes is you. You're the new owner. So if the business goes downhill, by definition it's you.