Rinnaird advises owners selling manufacturing and industrial businesses, and the strategics and PE platforms acquiring them. Principal-led. Never both sides of the same deal.
Twenty years running manufacturing businesses, plant floor to president. Two acquisitions closed and integrated from the buyer's side of the table. Now advising owners and acquirers.
Sellers who go to the table with an adviser earn 6–25% more than sellers who go alone. That's a published academic finding across 4,468 private-company sales, not a sales pitch. Of deals over $5M that closed, 83% had three or more offers. The money is lost in four specific places:
A buyer who approaches you directly is pricing a business with no competition. Competition is what moves the number, and you can't create it alone.
Owner compensation, one-time costs, and personal expenses buried in the P&L understate your true earnings, and every missed $100K is roughly $450K of price at manufacturing multiples.
The price at the letter of intent is not the price an unprepared seller gets at closing. Buyers cut it when diligence finds surprises: owner dependence, concentration, inventory.
Working-capital pegs, earnouts, and transition terms are negotiated against buyers doing their tenth deal. Six-figure swings live in these clauses alone.
Sources: Agrawal, Cooper, Lian & Wang, Quarterly Journal of Finance; IBBA / M&A Source Market Pulse Q1 2026; manufacturing multiple ranges per published 2026 industry guides.
A private, competitive sale process run end to end by one person, the principal, for owner-operated manufacturing businesses. Your business is never publicly listed anywhere. Every buyer approach is anonymized and under NDA, and you approve every name before your identity is released.
Your earnings recast the way buyers actually read them: add-backs found and documented, a valuation range, any offer in your hand graded against it in writing, and the number that matters most: what you'd actually keep, modeled with your CPA before anyone negotiates anything.
The data room built to a buyer's diligence standard before any buyer sees anything, by someone who has run buyer diligence. Owner dependence and customer concentration found, addressed, and narrated on your terms instead of discovered on theirs. This is what protects the price between LOI and close.
A ranked map of real buyers (strategics, PE add-ons, qualified individuals) approached confidentially and run in parallel with any buyers you already have. Competition created deliberately; employee continuity a stated screening criterion; one buyer walking never resets you to zero.
Letter of intent through closing: price, working-capital peg, earnout terms, your transition and post-close role, negotiated by someone who has set those terms from the buyer's chair. Your attorney drafts the paper; Rinnaird negotiates the terms.
Rinnaird carries the process; you run the shop. A written process map, bounded demands on your time, and the numbers never dipping because you were distracted. A business that slips mid-process pays for it at closing.
Rinnaird brings two experiences to every engagement: running manufacturing businesses and buying them.
Acquisitions closed and diligence run from the buyer's chair. Owners get someone who knows what buyers will test. Acquirers get someone who knows what to test.
Twenty years running manufacturing P&Ls: pricing, supplier terms, lead times, owner independence. The earnings buyers pay for, built firsthand.
The person you meet is the person on your deal, start to finish. No juniors, no handoffs.
Never both sides of the same transaction.
Rinnaird also runs a value-building track for owners with runway: fix what buyers discount (pricing, supplier terms, lead times, owner independence) before going to market, so the eventual sale starts from a stronger number. Ask about it in the conversation; I'll tell you honestly which track fits.
Rinnaird sources owner-operated manufacturing and industrial add-ons for strategic acquirers and PE platforms. I've closed and integrated acquisitions from the buyer's side and run manufacturing P&Ls from the plant floor to president.
Owner-operated targets identified against your thesis.
Owner dependence, customer concentration, and operating condition assessed by someone who has run the plants and the diligence.
The person you meet does the work. Never both sides of the same transaction.
"Brokers list businesses. I spent twenty years building the numbers buyers pay for, and I've been the buyer."
Rinnaird is an advisory firm for manufacturing and industrial M&A. It helps owners understand what their business is worth, prepare it for a buyer's scrutiny, and see the transaction through to close, and helps acquirers find and assess the right add-ons.
The firm takes its name from An Rinn Aird ("the point of the height"), the coastal townland in County Kerry where Aidan grew up, on the Iveragh Peninsula opposite Valentia Island. Rinnaird LLC is a Virginia company.
Aidan O'Sullivan has spent 20 years in manufacturing, starting as a project engineer in Ireland and progressing to President, Americas of Quickparts, a private equity-backed on-demand manufacturer, where he held full P&L responsibility for a $40M+ region with 170 employees across three sites. His career spans PE-backed, venture-backed, NYSE-listed, and global plc environments, including plant leadership at Kerry Group.
His M&A experience comes from the buyer's side of the table: on behalf of Shapeways he completed the acquisitions of Linear AMS, a Michigan additive and injection-molding manufacturer, and MFG.com, a manufacturing software marketplace, and led the 18-month post-merger integration. He sourced the acquisition that preceded the company's 2021 NYSE listing and served as its senior-most operations executive through that listing.
Aidan holds an MBA in Finance, Global Business & Strategy from NYU Stern, and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and BA in Mathematics from Trinity College Dublin. He is based in Virginia.
Then the clock is already running, and one thing matters more than anything else: don't sign anything with an exclusivity period before you talk to someone on your side. Thirty minutes, free and confidential.
Talk before you replyIt's exactly the right time. The most consequential decisions happen before you respond to that buyer. Two things before anything else: don't sign anything with an exclusivity period, and find out what your business is actually worth before you answer. An unsolicited offer is a starting point, not a market price.
Never publicly. Your name, location, and identifiable details appear nowhere. Buyers are approached individually, anonymized and under NDA, directly and through vetted private networks. You approve every name before your identity is released.
A monthly advisory fee, half of which credits back against the success fee at closing, and a success fee when your deal closes. The engagement is month to month; you can leave on 30 days' notice and keep every work product. Exact numbers in writing before you commit to anything.
No. Month to month, 30 days' notice, and the recast financials, data room, and buyer work are yours whether you sell, wait, or change your mind.
No, and be wary of anyone who does. The market sets the price; nobody honest guarantees it. What I guarantee is the work: buyer-grade preparation, a genuinely competitive process, and someone on your side of the table who has sat on theirs.
It depends on your earnings, how much the business depends on you, and who's buying. That's the point of the free conversation: thirty minutes and you'll have a straight answer.
Yes, but never on the same transaction.
Strategic acquirers and PE platforms sourcing owner-operated manufacturing and industrial add-ons.
One conversation: what your business would be worth in a properly run process, and if you have an offer in hand, what that offer looks like against it. You leave knowing where you stand, whatever you decide. No obligation, and nothing shared with anyone. Acquiring? Tell me your thesis and I'll tell you whether I can help.
Prefer to just call?
Connect with Aidan on LinkedIn