Encourage the vocation of a buyer

For years, it was thought that businesses whose ownership was passed from one generation to the next were more assured of their sustainability than businesses sold to a competitor or those taken over by outside buyers. This postulate is less and less observable today when family succession is no longer a determining factor in guaranteeing the survival and expansion of a business over time.

With nearly 24,000 SMEs expected to be sold or transferred over the next year in Quebec, according to Statistics Canada, we understand that it is only a tiny proportion of these that will be subject to a family recovery.

This is why we must further encourage the vocation of buyers in Quebec and give our SMEs more chances to continue their activities, because the movement of retiring owners will continue for at least the next 10 years.

We saw it again this week when the DeSerres company, which had been managed since 1975 by Marc DeSerres, a third generation member of the famous Montreal family, decided to sell its network of 28 art supply stores to Canada to the Renaud-Bray bookstore group.

Obviously, there was no member of the fourth generation willing or able to continue the destiny of the company founded by Omer DeSerres, and it is all the better if a Quebec group like Renaud-Bray, well established in the trade retailer in the cultural sector, decides to continue the adventure started more than 100 years ago.

However, the DeSerres stores could also have been bought by key employees of the company who would have united to formulate an offer to their employer by preparing the exit of the selling owner over several years. Because it is the employees who best know the customers, the suppliers, the teams in place and the strengths and weaknesses of the company.

Managerial takeover is a path that many SMEs will increasingly have to consider over the coming years, because we have noticed that since 2021, more transfers and buyouts of existing companies have taken place than there have been. creates new ones.

Worse, according to what Nathaly Riverin, the founder of the Entrepreneurial Perseverance program, noted in the Business Forum of The Press of last week, the number of active entrepreneurs in Quebec has only declined since its peak in the early 2000s.

The number of entrepreneurs in Quebec increased from 190,000 in 2001 to 133,400 in 2021, and should fall below the 100,000 mark by 2025, according to the specialist.

Give tools to professionals

In this particular entrepreneurial context, it is interesting to observe that people in the economic sector have taken initiatives to stimulate interest in better management of our businesses.

The Regroupement des Jeunes Chambres de Commerce du Québec (RJCCQ), which is present in 40 cities in the 16 administrative regions of Quebec and whose members are under 35 years old, has set up a repreneurship movement to raise awareness among professional employees of their capacity to buy the companies they work for.

“We want to raise awareness, equip and even network our members to enable them to buy their business. We have launched a pilot project with a first cohort of 50 people who will receive support. We are going to launch everything at the beginning of November,” Pierre Graff, CEO of the RJCCQ, explains to me.

Pierre Graff, who was on tour in Rouyn-Noranda, launched this first cohort of employee buyouts which will be called “From employee to buyer” and which will count on five accompanying partners.

The people recruited must occupy key positions in a company and they will be supported by experts to carry out the takeover.

The first area is finance and business financing specialists from Desjardins will support them, then we will develop a transfer plan with legal experts from De Grandpré Chait.

The IT firm Alithya will, for its part, raise participants’ awareness of the management and investments of technological assets, while a consulting services firm will see to their supervision in everything relating to operations management.

The RJCCQ launched the takeover project three years ago and has already made 1,300 young active members aware of the process, but here we structure the project in such a way as to provide the tools and support necessary to train a small army of buyers.

“We lack buyers in Quebec and we are launching this first initiative. We only hope to quickly repeat the experience and multiply it subsequently. If we can save hundreds of businesses that would not have found a buyer, that will already be huge,” says the CEO of the RJCCQ.