Sample dossier: Harbourline Ceramics (fictional)

Harbourline Ceramics is a fictional maker of handmade stoneware tableware based in Portland, Oregon. It sells direct to consumers through its own online shop and wholesale to around 40 independent homeware shops. The business, the people and every record in this sample are invented to show how a Loupe dossier reads.

The listing asks $2.1m on revenue of $1.2m and seller's discretionary earnings (SDE) of $480k. Two one-off contracts sit inside those figures. Without them, trailing twelve month revenue is $0.94m and SDE is about $308k, which puts the asking price at 6.8 times normalised SDE against a median of 3.2 times for similar listings.

Overall view

A well-reviewed brand with loyal repeat customers, priced on a year that will not repeat. The price is hard to support on normalised earnings, and the brand's domain and trademark sit with one of the owners personally. Worth pursuing only at a price closer to Loupe's range, with the intellectual property transferred at completion and a handover period covering glaze recipes and wholesale accounts.

Harbourline makes plates, bowls, mugs and serving pieces in a leased studio with two gas kilns. Pieces are thrown and glazed by a team of five potters, packed on site and shipped by parcel carrier. Direct online sales make up 71% of normalised revenue and wholesale the other 29%.

The founders, a married couple, started the business in 2016 as Coastal Kiln Goods LLC. One founder runs production and holds the glaze recipes, which are not written down in full. The other runs the online shop, marketing and the wholesale accounts, and works about 50 hours a week. Neither role is covered by anyone else.

Can it be run remotely

Not fully. Production, quality control and the kiln schedule need someone on site every working day. A buyer who does not want to live near Portland would need a studio manager in place before completion.

Normalising revenue

Two contracts account for $260k of trailing twelve month revenue: a $180k tableware order for a hotel group's new sites and an $80k corporate gifting order. Neither customer has ordered before or since, and the sellers confirmed neither is expected to repeat.

Add-backs to test

• Owner salaries of $165k are added back in full. That is standard for SDE, but a buyer who does not work in the business will need a studio manager at about $75k.

• A spouse's salary of $45k is added back, but the spouse works full time in packing and fulfilment. The role would need replacing at about $42k, so we have not accepted this add-back.

• An $8k legal fee for the 2023 re-registration is a genuine one-off and is accepted.

Trend

Excluding the one-off contracts, revenue grew 6% in 2024 and 2% in 2025, and is 3% lower in the first seven months of 2026 than a year earlier. Online orders are flat; the decline is in wholesale.

This section is informational only. It is not investment advice and it is not an offer to buy or sell.

Structures worth exploring

• An earn-out tied to wholesale revenue over two years, which shares the risk of the wholesale decline with the sellers.

• Vendor finance for part of the price, which keeps the production founder engaged through the handover.

• An SBA 7(a) loan: the business has three years of tax returns and positive cash flow, but lenders will size the loan on normalised earnings, not the listed figures.

• Transfer of the domain name and the trademark application into the company before completion, as a condition of the deal.

Traffic, search and reputation

• Web traffic is estimated at 38,000 visits a month, 22% lower than a year ago.

• About 61% of visits come from organic search, mostly for the brand name and product terms.

• The shop shows an average rating of 4.7 from 1,240 reviews; we found no sign of incentivised reviews.

• The brand's Instagram account has about 48,000 followers and posts weekly.

Trademarks, litigation and insolvency

• A trademark application for HARBOURLINE was filed in 2024 in the name of one founder, not the company. It is still pending.

• No federal court cases were found. One small claims case from 2022 over a damaged wholesale delivery was dismissed.

• No bankruptcy filings were found for the company, its former name or either member.

Handmade tableware sits at the premium end of a large, slow-growing homeware market. Buyers pay for craft and for a look that mass producers find hard to copy, but they are also sensitive to shipping costs and breakage.

Harbourline's closest competitors are other small studios selling online, several of which have grown through social media over the last three years. Larger homeware brands now sell handmade-look ranges made overseas at about half Harbourline's prices, which is the most likely cause of the wholesale decline: independent shops are stocking the cheaper ranges alongside, or instead of, studio pottery.

The direct online business looks more resilient. Repeat customers placed 44% of online orders in the last twelve months, and the average order value rose from $118 to $126.

The fictional client for this sample is a US search funder looking for ecommerce or consumer brands with $1m to $5m deal sizes, at least $250k of SDE and a business that can be run with a manager in place.

• Matches: United States, ecommerce and consumer products, deal size, SDE on normalised figures, strong reviews and repeat customers.

• Does not match: the business cannot be run remotely without a studio manager, and production depends on one founder today.

Everything in this sample is fictional: the business, the people, the documents and the records. It shows the structure, the level of detail and the way findings are sourced in a real Loupe dossier.

Method

We start from the listing as published and the documents the seller provides, rebuild the financials on a trailing twelve month basis and remove anything that will not recur. We then check public records: company registries, directors and owners, domain registration, trademarks, court and insolvency indexes and sanctions lists. Traffic and search figures come from third-party estimates and are marked as estimated. Every finding records its source, the date it was checked and our confidence: verified when we saw the primary record, as listed when it comes from the seller or the listing, and estimated when it is modelled or from a third-party estimate.

Sources

• Listing as published on a fictional marketplace, accessed 1 September 2026.

• Seller's profit and loss statements, January 2024 to July 2026, and payroll summary, received 3 September 2026.

• Oregon Secretary of State business registry, accessed 2 September 2026.

• RDAP registration data for the shop's domain, accessed 2 September 2026.

• USPTO trademark search, accessed 2 September 2026.

• PACER and county court indexes, accessed 2 September 2026.

• OFAC SDN list, UK Sanctions List and UN consolidated list as imported by Loupe on 1 September 2026, searched 2 September 2026.

• Third-party web traffic estimates, accessed 2 September 2026.

• Loupe valuation engine 1.0.0 with benchmark set version 1, and the Loupe listings database, 5 September 2026.

• Call with the sellers, 4 September 2026.

This dossier is general information for the reader's own use. It is not investment, legal, tax or financial advice, and it may not be redistributed.