What happened
Denna Mezuman became president of Avron Canada, a Greater Toronto Area distributor serving childcare and education customers, at age 29, after her father, the founder, died of cancer. As reported by Talent Canada, there was no plan and no road map. The pandemic arrived in her first year, and global supply chain problems followed in her second.
The family later sold the company, which had grown from a basement start-up to more than 100 employees and three branches across Canada. They interviewed several Big Four advisory teams before choosing advisors. A private equity buyer with a specialized arm in the same industry emerged. The deal was a share sale. The family kept the real estate, kept the brand, kept equity alongside the buyer and holds a board seat.
Mezuman says due diligence took far more time and internal resources than she expected, and the process was more of a roller coaster than advisors had suggested. She credits the seasoned, long-tenured core team her father had built with filling the gaps a new leader could not. In her words, the sale could not have happened without them. Her advice is to start gathering data early, and to get an external valuation during a neutral period.
Why it matters if you are hiring
Most succession talk is about ownership. This story shows it is also a hiring problem. When a founder leaves suddenly, the business runs on whoever knows the customers, the systems and the history. At Avron that was a group of long-serving staff. Many owner-led Canadian firms have the same dependence, and many have no one behind those people.
Two hiring decisions follow. First, key-person risk: which roles hold knowledge that exists nowhere else, such as operations managers, controllers, sales leads and plant supervisors? Each needs a documented backup, whether an internal successor or an outside hire brought in early enough to learn the work.
Second, readiness for a sale. Due diligence pulls finance, operations and HR staff away from their day jobs for months. A buyer will also look hard at the depth of the management team. A thin bench lowers confidence, and it may lower value. Owners who plan a sale in the next few years should look at finance and operations capacity now, including temporary or contract help to cover diligence workload.
One thing to do this week
List your 5 most critical roles below the owner or CEO. Next to each, write who could cover it for 90 days if that person left tomorrow. Every blank is a hire, a development plan or a contract backup to start on.
Traverse Staffing helps Canadian employers find the finance, operations and leadership-track people who make a business less dependent on any one person, on contract or permanent terms.