If you own a plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing or landscaping company between Wellington and Firestone, this page is for you. Kent & Tamarack helps owners of trade and service companies in Northern Colorado sell to a buyer who will keep the trucks running and the crew employed. The talks stay private, and you set the terms.
Most owners only sell a business once. You do not need to learn a new trade to do it. You need someone who knows how buyers think and who will tell you the truth about what your company is worth.
Two counties, one corridor
Northern Colorado is really two places that share an interstate. Larimer County holds Fort Collins, Loveland, Wellington and Timnath. Weld County holds Greeley, Windsor, Evans, Johnstown and Firestone. Census Bureau estimates for 2024 put the Fort Collins-Loveland metro area at about 374,000 people and the Greeley metro area at about 370,000. Greeley has grown faster. Its metro added roughly 12 percent from 2020 to 2024, while Fort Collins-Loveland added about 4 percent.
The two sides have different work. Fort Collins has Colorado State University, older neighborhoods near Old Town, and a lot of homeowners who call for service and repair. Weld County is the state's big farm and energy county. In the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, Weld ranked first in Colorado for the value of farm products sold, with about a quarter of the state's total. Weld County's own energy office says 83 percent of Colorado's crude oil and 56 percent of its natural gas come from the county.
So a trade company in Greeley may have a very different customer list from one in Loveland, even though the two towns are a short drive apart. A buyer will want to see which kind you are.
What buyers look for in a Northern Colorado trade company
Where the revenue comes from
A buyer reads your customer list before almost anything else. Homeowner service work, repeat maintenance agreements and steady commercial accounts are easy to understand. Large jobs for one builder, one dairy or one oilfield operator are harder, because if that customer leaves, a big piece of the business leaves with it.
The answer is to show the numbers honestly. If oil and gas work went up and down with prices over the years, we show those years. If a builder in Timnath or Johnstown gave you three good years of new-home work, we show what your service work did during the same time. Buyers pay more for a business they understand.
The map of your work
In Denver, a service company may run all day inside a few ZIP codes. Up here, a crew may start in Windsor, drive to a farm east of Greeley, and finish in north Fort Collins. Drive time is part of your cost, and a buyer will ask about it.
It helps to have a simple picture: which towns your jobs come from, how far your trucks go, and how many hours a week the crew spends on the road. If you run routes on US 34, Highway 85 or Highway 14, a buyer from outside the area may not know how long those drives take in January. You do. We put that knowledge on paper.
Your crew and who runs the day
A good tech is hard to replace. A buyer will want to know who your lead people are, how long they have been with you, and whether the company runs when you take a week off. If you still answer every call and price every job yourself, that is normal for an owner-run company. We look at what can change before a sale so the buyer does not see the business as "the owner plus some trucks."
Who buys trade companies here
The buyers who look at a Northern Colorado trade company come from a few places. None of them is right for every seller.
A local competitor may want your customers, your crew or your part of the map. That buyer knows the market, but you have to be careful about what they see and when.
A Denver-area company may want a branch north of the metro. CDOT has been adding express lanes on I-25 north of Denver for years, and it expects the last stretch, from Mead to Berthoud, to be finished in 2028. Until then, a Denver owner who sends crews up the interstate every morning loses time in traffic and work zones. Buying a company that already lives here solves that.
Some buyers are individuals. They may be a manager who wants to own a company, or someone who wants to move to Fort Collins or Loveland and buy a business with a bank loan. These buyers care a lot about how easy the company is to run without you.
Employees and family members can also buy. These deals need more planning on how the price gets paid, and we walk through that with you.
What is different about selling outside Denver
A sale in Northern Colorado follows the same basic steps as a sale anywhere. A few things change.
Property matters more. Many owners up here own a shop on a few acres, a yard full of equipment, or a building in an older part of Loveland or Greeley. You can sell the property with the company, keep it and collect rent from the buyer, or sell it later. Each choice changes what you take home, so we work it through with your accountant.
Seasons show in the books. A landscaping or snow removal company has a very different month in July than in February. An HVAC company in Greeley gets busy in the first cold week of the fall. A buyer who has only seen Denver numbers may misread a slow month. We show the full year and the reasons for it.
Word travels fast. Windsor, Wellington and Evans are close-knit. Suppliers, other contractors and your own customers talk at the counter. So your company name stays out of the early talks. A buyer signs a confidentiality agreement first, and only then sees who you are.
How the sale works
The steps are simple: a private first call, an honest range for what your company is worth with the reasons behind it, a quiet search for the right buyer, and a clean close with your accountant and attorney. You can read the four steps in more detail here. If your company is in a specific trade, our pages for HVAC owners and plumbing owners cover what buyers look for in your line of work.
You stay in charge the whole time. You pick the buyer, the price you accept and the date you step back.
Start with a phone call
The first call is free, private and carries no obligation. You tell us about your company and what you want your life to look like after the sale. We tell you plainly what we see. The founder answers the phone at (983) 900-6537.
If you work in Boulder County or the Denver metro, see our pages for Boulder County owners and Denver owners.