Ivona Butcher bought a Czech trade show shop, watched revenue hit zero, then tripled it

The Setup Ivona Butcher grew up in the Czech Republic watching her father start a business after the 1989 revolution, then go bankrupt. The lesson stuck: ownership is the game, but the downside is real. She became an economist, did TV commentary, then landed in New York finance. She and her husband Corbin both went through Kellogg, then decided to hunt together. Traditional search fund investors passed on a Czech deal. Too small a market, they said. The Butchers raised money anyway from contacts they'd built at Kellogg and search fund conferences, accepting standard terms in exchange for high-quality backers. Determination over structure. The Deal They built their own sourcing engine: a Python scraper pulling Czech public financial filings, filtered by owner age, headcount, revenue, and industry. Czech mandatory disclosure made this cleaner than equivalent U.S. work. First LOI was an IT company; investors killed it over hiring risk. They flipped the deal to a local PE firm (it became one of that firm's best investments) and kept hunting. A small local broker (dismissed at first for lacking transactional polish, respected later for deep seller relationships) introduced them to a Czech-Dutch couple selling two tightly integrated trade show booth design and assembly companies. Six months of negotiation. The numbers: - Combined revenue: €4M - EBITDA margin: 30% (~€1.2M) - Headcount: 30-35 - Capital stack: 60% senior debt, 25% seller note, 15% equity Credibility was the hardest input. Czech sellers were skeptical of the search fund concept, so the Butchers seeded coverage in Forbes and local business press. Cheap local PR firm, big effect. When a seller Googled them before a first meeting, something legitimate showed up. First 100 Days The handoff mapped itself. Corbin shadowed the Dutch co-owner on sales. Ivona shadowed the Czech co-owner on operations. Two couples, clean split of knowledge transfer, employees adjusted fast. They inherited a herd of sheep on the property and warehouses full of items nobody had written down. Nothing material was misrepresented. The operational complexity that scared off PE firms was exactly the moat they wanted: too tangled for a financial buyer, perfect for hands-on operators willing to sit with the outgoing sellers and learn the business by doing it. Operating Moves They deliberately shaped the customer book: - Leaned into recurring exhibition clients (booth positioning in halls is sticky year to year) - Exported to Western Europe rather than selling domestically - Stayed out of automotive (cyclical), avoided government contracts entirely (corruption exposure) - Overweighted defense and chemicals clients Then COVID. Revenue went to zero in a week. Every trade show on earth cancelled at once. The playbook they ran: - Kept all 30+ employees on payroll while competitors laid off - Pivoted production capacity to kitchen manufacturing and virtual showroom builds to generate any cash - Renegotiated the bank loan to pause payments - Bought back the 25% seller note at a steep discount, effectively reducing purchase price by a full turn of EBITDA