The Acquisition Box, Updated: What We’re Buying Into 2027
We publish our acquisition criteria because vague criteria waste everyone’s time. Founders deserve to know in about ninety seconds whether a conversation is worth having.
Here is where the box sits going into 2027, including the places it has moved.
- Trailing revenue between 500 thousand and 10 million dollars.
- DTC-first channel mix. Marketplace-only businesses are a different animal.
- Genuinely profitable, or profitable with one obvious fix we can name in the first call.
- Real product love — 4.5 stars or better, with review volume behind it.
- A category we can still be operating in a decade from now.
What tightened
Profitability, with less patience. We used to underwrite a credible path to profit. Now we want profit already, or a single identifiable cause of its absence — a bad freight contract, one unprofitable channel. Businesses needing three simultaneous fixes need an owner with more appetite for risk than we have.
Customer concentration. If one channel, one retailer or one creator relationship carries more than about half of revenue, that is not a brand yet. It is a distribution arrangement with branding on it.
Clean data. This is new and it matters more than it used to. If order history, customer records and cost data are a mess, our entire operating model — which runs on that data — starts a year behind. We will still look. It will show up in the price.
What loosened
Team size. We used to worry about brands run by one or two people, because the operational load looked unmanageable after the founder left. That concern has largely dissolved. A small team running good internal tooling is now a feature — it usually means the operating logic is well understood rather than buried in tribal knowledge.
Some of the most attractive businesses we see are two people, profitable, and quietly excellent at one thing.
| Signal | What we like to see | What gives us pause |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 500K–10M trailing | Below 500K rarely supports the transition |
| Profit | Positive, or one nameable fix | Three problems at once |
| Channel mix | DTC-led with owned audience | One channel above half of revenue |
| Product | 4.5 stars with real volume | High ratings on very few reviews |
| Data | Clean order and cost history | Reconstructing the P&L from scratch |
The best businesses we buy are rarely for sale in an obvious way. They are run by someone who is very good at the product and quietly tired of the rest of it.
How the conversation goes
Direct, and with the person who runs the company. No intermediated process, no month of scheduling. If it is not a fit we will say so on the first call and tell you why, which is more useful than a polite maybe.
If it is a fit, we move in weeks. Honest numbers, plain terms, and a structure that does not require you to stay for three years unless you want to.
Start at Sell Your Brand, or just use the contact page. Every conversation is confidential and none of them obligate you to anything. We will also be at Commerce Roundtable in San Diego in September if you would rather do it in person.
LAMPWORK acquisition criteria as of August 2026. Criteria are guidance, not rules — exceptional businesses outside the box are still worth a conversation.
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