Telling Customers the Business Has a New Owner

A stranger behind the counter

A customer who has bought from the same shop for ten years walks in to find someone new at the counter. The new face explains, pleasantly, that they bought the business in January.

Other customers find out from a new company name on an invoice, a changed email address or a different voice on the phone. Nobody told them.

They start wondering, mostly in silence: whether prices will rise, whether the staff they trust are staying, whether last year's warranty and the gift certificate in a drawer still count.

Some ask. Others quietly try a competitor, and the regular customers the purchase was meant to include begin to drift away.

What customers want to know

The questions are predictable, which means they can be answered before anyone asks:

• Who you are, and why you bought the business.
• Who is staying, especially the staff customers know by name.
• What happens to prices, hours, products and services.
• Whether warranties, gift certificates and store credits still hold.
• What changes, and from which date.
• Who to contact with a question or a problem.

Every unanswered item on that list is a small reason for a regular to look elsewhere. Answering all of them takes one page.

A short page from the new owner

Write it in the first person, signed with your name, with a photograph of you in the business. It should read as a letter to regulars, not a press release.

Start with what stays the same, because that is what most customers care about. Then list the changes, each with its date, and finish with how to reach you.

Keep it to a few hundred words. A customer should be able to read it on a phone while waiting at the counter.

Where the page goes

For the first few months, link to it from a short line above everything else on the home page, such as new owners since January.

Mention it on invoices and receipts, at the counter, and in any newsletter the business already sends. Customers should meet the news before they meet the changes.

Update the about page at the same time. A page still describing the previous owner's thirty years in the trade, with their photograph, tells visitors nobody has looked at it.

If the previous owner is willing, ask for a few lines of their own. A word from them introducing you carries weight with customers who were loyal to them.

Warranties, gift certificates and credits

These are the questions that cost customers money, so they deserve exact answers. Say plainly whether you honour gift certificates, store credits, warranties and prepaid services from before the sale.

Which obligations pass to you depends on how the purchase was structured and on the agreement, and consumer rules may also apply. Ask the lawyer who handled the sale; this post gives general information, not legal advice about your purchase.

Where you choose to honour something you were not obliged to, say so warmly and without fuss. Accepting an old gift certificate costs little and keeps a customer.

A worked example

A scooter shop in Nanaimo sells new and used motor scooters, services them in a two-bay workshop, and keeps a counter of parts, helmets and riding gear.

The founder sold it last fall to a couple who had moved from Alberta. The mechanic stayed and so did the phone number, but the website still showed the founder's photograph and story.

Over the winter, regulars learned of the sale from invoices with a new company name. Several asked whether warranty work on scooters bought from the founder would still be done, and a few booked spring service elsewhere.

The new owners published a page with their names and a photograph of them with the mechanic.

It lists what stays: the mechanic, the hours, the phone number, all gift certificates, and warranty work on every scooter sold before the sale.

It then lists what changes and when: card payments at the counter from March, Saturday hours from April, and a new email address. The founder added two paragraphs wishing them well.

The page is linked from the home page and printed for the counter, and the spring service reminders mention it. Regulars with a question now find the answer before deciding where to take their scooter.

The accounts that came with the business

A sale also moves the business's online accounts, and these are easy to forget: the domain name, the website and its hosting, the email accounts, the map listing, the Facebook page and any review profiles.

Each should be in the new owner's name, with the new owner's email address for logins and recovery. Until then, the previous owner can still change them, and customers may write to an inbox nobody reads.

Whoever looks after your website can list every account and help move each one. It is a short job that prevents years of locked doors.

Keeping the old routes open

Customers will use the old email address, the old phone extension and old bookmarks for a long time. Keep each one working, forwarding to the right person, for at least a year.

If the business name changes, keep the old name visible for a while, with the word formerly beneath the new one. Customers searching for the name they know should still find you.

The counter-case

Some sales are invisible to customers. The name, the staff and the service stay the same, the previous owner was never on the floor, and nothing a customer touches will change.

A prominent announcement there can create worry where there was none. A short update to the about page, and an honest answer ready for anyone who asks, may be all that is needed.

The online accounts still need to move, though, and the first time a customer asks about a warranty, the answer should already be written down.

The first weeks under new ownership

1. Write a short page in your own name.
2. List what stays the same before what changes.
3. Give a date for every change.
4. Answer warranty and gift certificate questions plainly.
5. Mention the page on the home page and invoices.
6. Update the about page and the staff photographs.
7. Move every online account into your name.

Step two sets the tone. Customers read a new owner's message looking for what they might lose, and seeing the familiar things first lets them read the changes calmly.

When the next generation joins the family business looks at the other kind of change, a son or daughter joining rather than a buyer arriving, where the harder question is which customers the business wants next.

Frequently asked questions

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