Jarom Wren Bought 70% of VanLife Outfitters With $150K Down After Walking Through a QoE Reprice

The Setup

Jarom Wren spent 20 years in corporate brand management, running household names like Ziploc, Pledge, Scrubbing Bubbles, and El Monterey at SC Johnson and other CPG shops. Mid-six-figure total comp, stable ladder, and in his words, he was "renting himself to a corporation." At 47, with $350K in personal savings and a youngest kid graduating in 2030, he set a hard goal: geographic freedom by then, owned through a cash-flowing business he could run from anywhere.

A former colleague who had bought a $1M SDE business with $100K down using an SBA loan lit the fuse. Jarom started searching for something remote, digital, and big enough to afford real staff so he could work on it, not in it.

The Deal

VanLife Outfitters started as a blog in 2016 and became an e-commerce store in 2020, riding the van life wave through COVID. It sells refrigerators, insulation, tables, and conversion components to DIY van builders, differentiated by educational content and community trust rather than Amazon-style price competition. Roughly 10 employees, four straight years of double-digit growth, 1.4 orders per customer, gross margins in the 30s, net margins that had slipped from 15-20% to 10-15%.

The deal almost died three times:

- Banks hated e-commerce as collateral. - A restated P&L knocked SDE down roughly 20% (cost accounting errors). - The seller filed taxes cash basis but kept books on accrual, which SBA underwriters could not reconcile.

His loan broker told him to walk. "This is dangerous. Don't do it."

Instead of walking or locking a stale number, Jarom rewrote the LOI. Price would float to a quality of earnings review at a pre-agreed 3-3.5x multiple. Everyone would verify the truth together. QoE came back at roughly $800K-$1.05M SDE, about $50K above the restated figure. The sellers declined to raise the price, which handed Jarom a $50K gift on the way in.

Structure: Jarom bought 70% for ~$150K down plus SBA financing on the balance. Sellers rolled 30% equity, keeping skin in the game and cutting his downside. He considered a ROBS to tap his 401(k) and rejected it, wanting zero retirement risk on the deal.

First 100 Days

- Absorbed a 48-hour full site outage and migrated the storefront to Shopify. - Kept the seller-operators engaged through their 30% stake rather than treating close as handoff. - Set his own comp at roughly his former corporate base, about half his prior total comp, so cash stayed in the business.

Operating Lessons

- Reprice, don't walk. When QoE threatens your LOI, convert the price to a multiple of verified earnings instead of a fixed number. Both sides get honest, and the spread can swing either way. -