Making the right acquisition at the right time can be a challenge for any size company. Your company may have a gap in product that a potential acquisition could fill, but if there is an overlap in geography, the deal might not work as well as it could, according to Steve Smidler, president of Kaman Industrial Technologies in the MDM Interview: Kaman’s Expansion Strategy.
Identifying those business gaps that need to be filled, and then prioritizing acquisition goals is a way to qualify your M&A strategy.
“We always monitor both competitive pressure and customer pressure to see what they’re looking for,” Smidler says. “But we still have to evaluate if it makes business sense to make that move. Can we get paid for it? That’s really the challenge.”
Assessing each component of an acquisition – what the competition is doing, what customers are demanding, what your company is capable of achieving – is central to completing a successful transaction.
Smidler prioritized geographic expansion in his strategy for Kaman’s growth, and since then, Kaman has acquired multiple distribution companies, including Target Electronic Supply, Catching FluidPower, Florida Bearings and Zeller Corp. Most recently, Kaman acquired B.W. Rogers.
