How to Buy and Run a Manufacturer Through a Tariff Shock
For manufacturers, search fund and acquisition buyers, and operators running a business through a trade shock.
About Liohn Sherer
Liohn Sherer led Ideal Security, a Greater Montreal manufacturer of storm and screen door hardware founded in 1956 by his wife's grandfather, joining the company in 2016 and being named president in April 2023. He ran the third-generation family business through a tariff shock and sold it to Richelieu Hardware in September 2025, with operations folding into the acquirer the following year. He now works in fractional operations and AI implementation.
Liohn Sherer is the former president and owner of Ideal Security, a Greater Montreal door hardware company founded by his wife’s grandfather in 1956 and sold to Richelieu Hardware in September 2025. He joined in 2016 with no succession plan in place and spent his last three years running it, which makes him what Quebec calls a repreneur, someone who takes over a business rather than founding one. This is the honest version of an exit. He did not want to sell, took the acquirer’s meetings while telling them so, and changed his mind only when the tariff landscape turned a stable company that imported from Asia and sold half its output into the United States from limited but safe upside into what he calls no upside with unlimited downside. His conclusion about himself is the line the episode is named for: he is not a wartime CEO, and knowing that is an answer rather than a failure. He now builds operations, systems and fractional COO work at sherer.ca. The most useful part for anyone building something is what he discovered afterward. The business operating system and documented workflows he built to handle growth he was not actually driving turned out to be the thing that made a small team valuable to a buyer. That is the throughline 79 Development keeps coming back to. The clearest account of a business is the accurate one, including the parts that do not flatter the teller, and an honest, legible account of that work is what makes a brand understood, trusted, and findable by the systems people now ask for answers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- "I’m not a wartime CEO." It is the hinge of the whole story and he says it without flinching. Ideal imported everything from China and Taiwan, landed it in Canada, and crossed half of it into the United States, and the entire growth strategy set in late 2024 was built on the US market. When the tariff wars started he did not know how the business would stay profitable or compete against US-based rivals. In his own arithmetic the company went from "limited but safe upside" to "no upside with unlimited downside," and he was clear-eyed that the stress was not a thing he wanted to spend years fighting. Not every operator is built for the war, and knowing which one you are is a real answer rather than a failure.
- He did not want to sell, and says so plainly. Richelieu approached him around 2024 and he took the meetings to learn, while telling them he was not looking. His reasoning was unsentimental: he was not trying to scale Ideal, a cash injection would not change its future, and he did not believe the business was worth anything near what it would take for him to walk away. The plan was to run a small lifestyle business for the rest of his career. Tariffs did not improve the offer, they changed what the alternative was worth, and he went from "sure, I’ll talk" to "where do I sign."
- On the word exit. He uses it "begrudgingly," because the term arrives loaded with VC money and unicorns. He did exit, both sides found value, and he got a good deal. He also did not scale the company and did not exit in a way that let him retire. It is a small, precise act of honesty that most acquisition stories skip, and it is the reason the rest of the conversation is trustworthy.
- A scale of luck he keeps naming. He returns to it repeatedly and without performance: lucky that an off ramp existed at all, lucky that the deal found value for both parties, lucky in his team. He kept jobs for almost all of his employees through the transition, which was the thing that mattered most to him, and he still carries mixed feelings about it. There is a thank you card from the team on his office wall from the goodbye party, given by people who had been there 40 and 45 years and had joined him on a promise about building a small business together. "I felt like I pulled the rug out from under some people, and to have them thank me for the work that I did is still something that I find really emotional."
- The systems he built for growth that never came were what made the company sellable. A business operating system built on Asana, documented workflows, operating models, all of it created to handle growth he now admits he was not driving. The acquiring company was less strong and less diligent in exactly that area, and a small team doing things they found impressive became real value on the paper. His reflection is the best kind of hindsight, holding both halves at once: "I was building things that the company didn’t need at the time I was building them. But there was value in that build when it came time to find an off ramp." It let him look back at years he could have written off as focusing on the wrong things and see that it was not all failure.
- Taking over is a credibility problem before it is a systems problem. He was the first new hire in 10 to 15 years, walking into a team where people had spent whole careers. On day one, Diane, roughly 35 years in, brought him something she was doing and asked whether there was a better way. He is candid that some people were harder to bring along, that taking over always works this way, and that what the job actually required was change management earned rather than imposed. "Trying new things and breaking things and apologizing when I screwed things up and building the credibility that eventually gave me a team that was willing to follow me through the entire acquisition process."
- Two months out, he knows what he does not want. He describes himself as "healthily traumatized" by the last year or two, is not ready to be responsible for people’s paychecks and livelihoods, and does not want to be responsible for top line growth ever again. What the acquisition gave him was an unusually clear read on his own shape: strong at operations and systems, not strong at driving growth. He is building a portfolio practice out of that at sherer.ca, AI implementation for very small businesses, process and structure work, and fractional COO engagements for companies too small to have one, deliberately part time while his kids are in elementary school. He is also honest that it will not hold forever. "There’s only so much not doing and not building that I’m built for."
FULL TRANSCRIPT
What We Need to Grow, Episode 033: Not a Wartime CEO. A Founder Talk conversation with Liohn Sherer, Former President and Owner of Ideal Security. Cleaned for readability; the words are the speakers' own.
Caleb Pedosiuk: All right, Liohn, there are a couple of things I am really interested in with this conversation. This deals with tariffs, this deals with a Canadian manufacturing company in its original inception, and this company being sold. So you have participated in an off ramp, or an exit, and also being bought out at a period of time when you were not sure you necessarily wanted to. And then with the onset of tariffs things shifted and really changed the landscape, and that exit actually became more of a reality. I have a couple of other questions specifically in this, but if you want to introduce yourself, and maybe a quick bit about how you got involved in the company, that would be awesome.
Liohn Sherer: Yeah. My name is Liohn Sherer. I am the former president of Ideal Security. I joined my father in law. The company was founded by my wife's grandfather originally in 1956, so I joined in 2016. There was no succession plan. My wife and her siblings were not involved in the company. And I spent a few years working closely with my father in law to, as he put it, kick the tires and see if it was something I wanted to continue.
I found that I really loved running a small business. Door hardware is not sexy, and to be honest I was not passionate about the product line, but I was really passionate about running a small business, and managing the team, and the kind of sandbox that it gave me to play in and problem solve. I really enjoyed it. And the plan was to make that my career, to really stay for the rest of my life and run this little lifestyle business.
Caleb: Just outside of this conversation we were talking a little, and you were explaining what it was like to have employees and then be in this situation where, in the economic and geopolitical environment, tariffs have entered the scene over the last couple of years and impact different industries more than others. You had mentioned there was interest in the company, your company was attractive to investment prior, and it was not something that was really high on your list of priorities. But then the tariffs actually impacted that equation to a point where exiting was important. Can you share a little about what that process was like?
Liohn: Yeah. Richelieu Hardware. They are a big Quebec-based Canadian company, they are in a lot of hardware lines, including some overlap with our own, and they had approached me in probably 2024, maybe a little earlier, to talk about an acquisition. I told them at the time, happy to talk. I thought there was a lot for me to learn from maintaining the conversation with them. But I told them I was not really looking to sell, and a cash injection was not going to change much of our future. That was not what we were looking to do.
At the time I was not looking to scale Ideal, and it felt like a place where there was potential but limited upside, and almost no downside risk. We were stable. Cash flow was fine and we had a good operating model. And when tariffs came into play, we imported everything from China and Taiwan, and half of our business was in the US. My entire growth strategy, we had done strategic planning in November and December of 2024, and all of our growth strategy was based on the US. We were importing from China and Taiwan, landing it in Canada, and then crossing the border into the US.
When the tariff wars started, suddenly I did not know how we were going to make it profitable. I did not know how we were going to compete against our US-based competitors anymore. We had gone from limited but safe upside to what would look like no upside with unlimited downside for me. And I just did not like it. I am not built, I am not a wartime CEO. I am not built as an entrepreneur, and that stress level was not fun for me. So I very quickly made the decision, or came to the realization, that I did not want to fight through this. And fortunately Richelieu was still there.
As a small business you are really subject to the macroeconomic winds. It is hard as a large, effectively multinational business too, but if you are a Richelieu, or if you are a Prime-Line hardware, it is hard, but you do not look at shutting down in the next year or two. You just have to get through it, and you have the cash reserves and the size to get through whatever macroeconomic changes there are. So what was an existential crisis for us was to some degree business as usual for them.
Caleb: Would you use the term exit, or not?
Liohn: I use the term begrudgingly, or hesitantly, because I think there are some positive connotations with the term exit, and we think about VC money and we think about unicorns. I did exit, and the deal was, we were able to find value for both sides. I got a good deal out of it. But it certainly was not, I did not scale the business, and we did not exit in a way that let me retire. And again, if we go back to why I was lukewarm on the idea of selling in the first place, it was that I did not think the business was worth anything near what it would take for me to walk away from it. So it was an exit. The off ramp was an exit. I sold the company, I got good value for it. Some of the value there was plus value because of some of the things that we built while I was there. And that was great. I have no complaints about how it went.
Caleb: We talked a little about systems, and I am curious what it was like. I think it was 2016 you mentioned you came into the company, and then for the final three years you were sitting in the CEO capacity. What was it like to come into an existing business? There is a Quebec term you mentioned, repreneur.
Liohn: Repreneur. Quebec is very big on this repreneuriat, for people who are taking over existing businesses.
Caleb: Which I guess translates to operator. So you step in as an operator. What was it like to come into a business that you had not built, and then be able to bring in systems to bring improvement?
Liohn: I was very lucky. I was extremely lucky to inherit a really good team of people who, for the most part, were open to embracing change. They were not resistant and they were not threatened by somebody new and young coming in. I had been the first new hire, or the first new person to join, in I think 10 to 15 years. But literally on day one, I remember Diane, who had been there probably 35 years at the time, on day one, I do not remember what it was, but I remember that she came and asked me to look at something she was doing to see if there was a better way to do it. A lot of the team was like that.
There were obviously some people where it was harder to bring them along and harder to get them to accept some of the changes I wanted to make. That is always the case when you are taking over a business. But for the most part the team was really adaptable and open to me trying things, and to trying new things with me. So there is a lot of change management you have to be ready to do, and you have to build the credibility for that. And I really enjoyed that, actually. I enjoyed the process. I enjoyed trying new things and breaking things and apologizing when I screwed things up, and building the credibility that eventually gave me a team that was willing to follow me through the entire acquisition process.
Caleb: You mentioned that to some degree those systems being put in place had a positive impact on the overall attractiveness of the firm, and the value of the firm, at the acquisition point.
Liohn: Yeah. Through the acquisition, it is two months old now since I finished my contract, so everything in my head is through the lens of that. But through the acquisition I got to see what I was really good at and what I was really not great at. When you are running a small business you have to do everything, and you have to think you are good at everything, because that is just the nature of it. But I realize now I am great at operations and systems, and I am not so great at driving growth and top line growth. I spent a lot of time, particularly in the later years, optimizing and building systems to handle growth that I was not driving.
But we did put in place a business operating system. We put in place Asana and we built all of our operating models and our operating systems on top of it, and everything is documented and the workflows are there. That was something the acquiring company was less strong at and less diligent about, and it allowed us to do things with a small team that they found impressive. So there was added value there.
In retrospect there are two things that I see. One, I was building things that the company did not need at the time I was building them. But on the other hand, there was value in that build when it came time to find an off ramp. So it is comforting for me to see that value and to see it on paper, because I could spend a lot of time looking at the last few years and say, I focused on the wrong things and I did the wrong things, and that is why we ended up where we did. For me anyway, it is important to see my failures and be honest about them, but also have that metric of, it was not all failure, and you cannot get everything right. But there was value built there anyway.
Caleb: So you are two months out from this. Where do things sit right now? From what I understand you have been able to take a deep breath. July and August are summertime in Canada. From that perspective, what are you seeing on the horizon that you are wanting to develop next?
Liohn: I see a lot of what I do not want. I am, I guess, healthily traumatized by the last year or two there. I know that I am not ready to take on responsibility for people's paychecks and livelihoods right now. I do not want to be responsible for top line growth ever again. So I am very clear on what I do not want.
I am taking some time, but I also know what I am great at now and what I love doing, and that is on the operations side and the systems side. The timing works out great, and I have been able to dive into AI, for myself and for small businesses, and I am helping some small businesses with implementations there. It is fun for me and it is challenging and it is evolving rapidly.
What I would like to be doing for the next few years, particularly while my kids are still in elementary school and at home, is helping other companies where I can with their systems, with their AI implementations. I like the term fractional COO, helping companies that are too small to have a COO get that perspective on how to build systems and processes that can scale. And I would like to do all that part time and flexibly while my kids are still young enough that I can make the best use of time with them.
But I also see how my brain works, and I imagine yours too as an entrepreneur. There is only so much time off you can take. There is only so much not doing and not building that I am built for, and I have already seen the limits of that. So eventually I will go back to contributing to something bigger than myself and working with a team. I do not think I can be a solo operator for the rest of my career. So in a couple of years, when the kids no longer want to hear from me, I can see going into something bigger. I am hopeful that I can hold off a little while.
Caleb: I am curious to know what your support system is like. Depending on where you are based geographically, or digitally, do you feel like you have found a network of half a dozen, a dozen or more similar stage in life, similar aspirational level people to connect with?
Liohn: It is a good question, and I think there are a lot of people who look for this. I joined a Quebec-based group called EntreChefs PME. They were called the Groupement des chefs d'entreprise at the time I joined. I met a guy at the C2 Montréal conference, and I had been looking at YPO, which we were way too small for, and then EO, which I was still probably too small for. EntreChefs is like a Quebec version of this. It is for business leaders of small and medium sized businesses to get together and build a mastermind group, or forum, or whatever you want to call it.
That was really great. It got me into a whole new community with the francophone community here in Quebec, and I spent eight years there. I built a lot of intimacy with them. It was a good network. But all through that there were not a lot of distributors there. I always found it shocking that my personal network is mostly professionals, or video producers, or independent operators, and then in EntreChefs it was a lot of manufacturing and service agencies.
Now that I have moved on I think I am building a new network. There was this great moment in February on LinkedIn, particularly if you were into AI, where things were clicking and I was meeting people digitally, to your point, people who are interested in Asana and people who are interested in systems and people I could geek out with. It felt really organic and wholesome. And that lasted about three weeks before the AI slop hit, and now it is just all the same post over and over again about AI. I am building that network. I am meeting people. What is your network like, and how do you fill that gap?
Caleb: I think getting in the room with people, a lot of the time it is through one connection with someone, sometimes an invitation from them to a founder dinner, or to connect with others. And then from there, people show up and you get a good sense with them, could be a totally different industry. I personally found that I just try to cycle through and old school DM message, if there is something of value I found, or just to see what is going on, to keep in touch that way. And then from time to time, where there are reasons geographically to be in the same room together, I look to do that.
Liohn: I think what is really interesting about this moment, and everything comes back to AI for me these days, which I kind of hate, I am sick of it, but it is just always there. What is interesting about this moment is that it is bringing together people from, in my experience, dramatically different industries with dramatically different personal interests or even professional interests. You see leaders of service agencies and manufacturing agencies and solo operators and chiefs of staff. There are all these people who have almost nothing in common but are interested in this new tool, this new system, this new platform, and it is bringing very different interests together.
That has been great for me, to talk to people. We now have this thing in common that we are passionate about and excited about. And I think there is community building around that. In Montreal there are a lot of events that ostensibly are about AI but really are about just sharing your interests and sharing learning and growth. So I am going to a lot of those. There is one actually tomorrow night that I am excited to see.
Caleb: Very cool. So tell me a little about sherer.ca. This looks like a new initiative, something you have built up that is reflective of your own expertise.
Liohn: Yeah, it is a placeholder. In my free time I am slowly building the website, because that is fun and it is a vanity project. I am being oddly self-deprecating about it. I am doing consulting. I have two contracts now. It is what the next few years of my life are going to look like. But I am also not yet doing lead gen and building a pipeline and really seeking out a lot of work there. So sherer.ca is where that will eventually live, when I know exactly what the offering is, and when I am looking for more work than I have coming in.
Caleb: So s-h-e-r-e-r dot ca is the spot, and then you are on LinkedIn at Liohn Sherer, if I am pronouncing that right, L-I-O-H-N S-H-E-R-E-R on LinkedIn. I think the problem you are looking to solve, in helping systematically improve the processes that businesses have, is an important one, so that a lot of business owners can stay in their lane and keep their eye on the most important thing for them. I am excited for you to be able to find this next season. And I really appreciate you sharing candidly what it was like. A lot of people can put an exit as this goal, this finish line, and not necessarily understand the other factors around it. So it is really helpful to hear stories that are not just what hits the headlines, and to see how you were able to keep almost all your employees employed in this transition, and to do it in a way that was unexpected, navigating different weather economically and geopolitically, and to do so in a way that seems really grounded. Well done.
Liohn: Thanks. It is hard. I honestly still feel a lot of guilt about it. I still feel a lot of mixed feelings about how it went. I am mostly grateful. I got very lucky that I had an off ramp. I got very lucky that we were able to find value for both parties in it. I got extremely lucky with my team.
I have up on the wall here a thank you card from my team that they gave me at our last goodbye party. And that was really touching. There were people there who had been there 40, 45 years, people who saw their whole careers there, people who I brought in with a certain promise about building a small business together. And that all changed. I felt like I pulled the rug out from under some people, and to have them thank me for what they saw, the work that I did, is still something that I find really emotional to think about. It was tough and it was great, and it has been a wonderful team to work with.
It was an experience. There is a lot to share there. There is a lot to unpack still for me. But I know where I want to go next and I know what I am great at, and that is something I think is rare to get good insight and perspective into. So if anybody is listening out there and has questions or wants to learn more, I am just looking to talk to people and share my experience and see how I can help others. So find me and reach out. Do not hesitate. Love to talk.
Caleb: All right, Liohn, thank you so much.
Liohn: Thanks, Caleb. My pleasure.
What We Need to Grow is a conversation series by 79 Development, hosted by Caleb Pedosiuk. New episodes on YouTube and Spotify.