You built a trade company in Fort Collins, and now you are thinking about the day you hand it to someone else. Kent & Tamarack works with owners of plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, landscaping and other service companies who want to sell quietly, at a fair price, to a buyer who will look after the people and the customers. You set the pace. Nothing goes out with your name on it until you agree.
A city that fills in more than it spreads out
Fort Collins grew fast for decades. During the late 20th century the city spread south with new neighborhoods and shopping centers. That pace has slowed. Census Bureau estimates show the city at about 171,000 people in 2024, close to where it was in 2020. A labor market profile published by Larimer County in 2025 says job growth in the city climbed steadily through the 2000s and 2010s and then tempered in the early 2020s.
For a service company, a built-out city has real upside. It is full of houses, rental units and commercial buildings that need repair, replacement and upkeep every year. Water heaters wear out. Furnaces and air conditioners reach the end of their life. Older homes near Old Town and the neighborhoods around City Park need electrical updates and drain work. That steady flow of service calls is the kind of revenue a buyer likes to see.
New-home construction work is a smaller share here than in the Weld County towns to the east. If your company grew on homebuilder contracts, a buyer will ask what the business looks like without them. If it grew on service calls and maintenance plans, you are already in a strong place.
The work behind a Fort Collins trade company
Fort Collins pulls in workers from all over the region. The same Larimer County profile says almost 50,000 people commute into the city each day, and they fill nearly 60 percent of the jobs here. At least one in three jobs in Larimer and Weld counties together can be traced to Fort Collins. All of those workplaces are buildings with boilers, rooftop units, panels, restrooms and parking lots.
The Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce lists manufacturers such as Woodward, Anheuser-Busch, Otter Products and Water Pik, and says the university has drawn many high-tech companies to the area. Colorado State University is a large research school: it reported a record $622 million in research spending for fiscal year 2025. The city is also known for its breweries, from large plants to small taprooms.
That mix creates trade work you do not find in every town:
- Commercial HVAC and refrigeration for labs, clean rooms, cold storage and brewing.
- Process piping, backflow testing and boiler service for plants and campus buildings.
- Electrical work for manufacturers that cannot afford a shutdown.
- Grounds care and snow removal for office parks along Harmony Road and the south end of College Avenue.
If your company does some of this, a buyer will look closely at how you win it. A written service agreement that renews each year is worth more than work that goes out to bid every time. A long history with one plant manager is good, but a buyer will ask what happens if that person retires. We help you put this on paper in a way a buyer can trust.
What a buyer looks at first
Each buyer is different, but in Fort Collins a few questions come up in almost every sale of a service company.
The first is how much of the work comes back. Maintenance plans, service agreements and customers who call you every year are the core of the value. If you track these, good. If you do not, we can usually rebuild the picture from your invoices.
Next comes your crew. Fort Collins has a deep pool of young workers because of the university, but experienced techs are still hard to hire. A buyer will want to know who your lead people are and whether they plan to stay. Your crew is part of what you are selling.
A buyer will also ask where the trucks go. Most Fort Collins companies cover Wellington, Laporte and Timnath without a second thought, and many run to Windsor and north Loveland. A buyer from outside the area may not know that Wellington to south Timnath is a real drive at rush hour. A simple map of where your jobs came from last year answers a lot of questions early.
Last, your books. A clean profit and loss for three to five years, with your own pay and personal costs separated out, saves weeks. If your books need work, that is normal for an owner-run company, and your accountant can usually fix it before buyers see anything.
Who buys a trade company in Fort Collins
There is no single type of buyer. The right one depends on what you want after the sale.
A competitor in Fort Collins or Loveland may want your customers and your techs. They know the market well, which helps, but you need to control what they see and when.
A larger regional company may want a branch here so it can serve the north end of the Front Range without long drives. Fort Collins sits about 60 miles north of downtown Denver, which is a long way to send a van for a service call.
Some buyers are individuals. Fort Collins is a place many people want to live, and some of them arrive with a career in management, money saved and a plan to buy a business with a bank loan. These buyers care most about whether the company runs without the owner.
Your own people may want to buy. For your customers and crew, that can be the gentlest change of all, but it usually takes more planning on how the price is paid.
Keeping it quiet in a city where the trades all know each other
Fort Collins feels big, but the trades here are a small circle. Your supply house counter, your sub-contractors and your competitors talk. That is why your company's name stays out of every early conversation. Buyers first see a short profile of the business with no name, location or customer names. Only a buyer who has signed a confidentiality agreement and shown they are serious learns who you are. We call your cell phone, not the shop line, and we never show up at the shop during work hours unless you ask.
How a sale works
The steps are the same for every owner: a private first call, an honest price range with the reasons for it, a quiet search for the right buyer, and a clean close with your accountant and attorney. You can read the four steps here. If your company is in a specific trade, our pages for HVAC owners and plumbing owners go into what buyers look for in that line of work. For the wider area, see our Northern Colorado page.
Talk to the founder
The first call is free, it stays private and you owe nothing. Tell us about your company, your people and what you want the next few years to look like. We will tell you what we see, plainly, including anything a buyer is likely to push back on. The founder answers the phone at (983) 900-6537.
If you work across the county line, our pages for Loveland owners and Windsor owners cover those towns.