Bruce Vann - Alumni Profiles - People - Batten Institute

Entrepreneur Bruce Vann (MBA '13) is the first to admit the road to purchasing his company, LuXout, was both winding and rocky. He bought the Richmond, Virginia manufacturer of theater curtains in February 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic closed in and “no one was on stage for 18 months.” But since weathering that storm, Vann has grown LuxOut’s revenues roughly 60 percent, setting the stage for future success.

The transformation is the culmination of many years’ effort and diligence. Vann knew early on he wanted to be an entrepreneur: in high school in Hampton, Virginia, he started a business selling candy and cold drinks to his classmates. He’d sell out by lunchtime; the profits netted him enough pocket money to get through high school without having to find another job. He reveled in the independence.

He wrote his admissions essay for Darden on entrepreneurship. During his time in Charlottesville, Vann loved in particular two classes: Acquisition of Closely Held Enterprises, where he learned he could get a mortgage-type loan to purchase a business, similar to buying a house (an insight he’d use later on), and Bargaining and Negotiating, which taught him about the zone of possible agreement— the common ground two parties need to find to strike a deal. “That class was the most useful. It is everything I do today as an entrepreneur,” he says. Still, Vann faced an uphill battle going from aspiring to actual entrepreneur. He graduated from Darden without a compelling idea for founding a company. Nor did he have family money or connections to start a search fund. In fact, when he left school, he recalls having a “negative net worth.” So after graduation, he worked at ExxonMobil as “essentially a CFO for a small division” overseeing environmental remediation budgets for contaminated work sites. “Even though it was not the most glamorous job for a Darden MBA, it was really beneficial for me,” he recalls. During his tenure at ExxonMobil, he “learned how to ask hard questions and to de-risk deals.” That conservative mindset paid off during his search. “I was able to walk away from shiny objects and find the deal that worked for me.” Without the time steeped in ExxonMobil’s risk-averse culture, “I don't think I would have had the same level of fortitude” to hunt for and eventually make a wise acquisition, he said. Other corporate jobs followed ExxonMobil, but none fit. He started a drycleaning pick-up service but could not get the concept off the ground.

The years weren’t wasted though. Vann paid off his education and a car loan, saved a nest egg, consulted with mentors, and read the HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business “cover to cover.” By January 2019, he felt he was ready. He gave up his apartment, rented a room from his parents to conserve funds, and began searching in earnest for a business to buy.

He knocked on many doors before finding LuXout. When he and his future wife, who worked for the Newport News school system, walked through LuXout and saw boxes of stage curtains ready to be shipped and installed to school districts all over Virginia, something clicked.

“She knew it was the right business before I did,” Vann remembered. He liked the company’s longevity (around in one iteration or another since the 1940s), the organic growth rate, the industry stability, and the fact that the company had an “honest and motivated seller,” Vann recalled. A high school stage curtains starts around $17,000. 
To purchase LuXout, Vann invested about half of his much-improved net worth (roughly $100,000) and borrowed the rest at a low fixed rate. He kept the staff but managed the company differently than previous ownership. “My predecessor would be at the company eleven hours a day. He would open and he would close,” Vann explained. In contrast, Vann’s approach reflects his Darden learning— a leader sets big-picture goals but empowers staff to figure out how to reach them.

“I emphasize to my staff, ‘you all are the subject-matter experts,’” he said. “I try to get myself out of the way and let the creativity of my staff shine. That’s caused people to find their own voices and figure out their own solutions to all sorts of problems, and really do it in the way that's operationally superior.” 
Vann expected LuXout to grow at the rate of inflation, 2 to 3 percent a year. Instead, revenues rocketed up nearly 60 percent, thanks to add-on acquisitions of a ribbon weight supplier and a drapery company. They’re also working on expanding beyond stage-curtain sales into other segments, a “patient effort where we’re starting to see some fruit and hope to see more.”

Prior to 2019, stage curtains were “not a product I ever thought about,” commented Vann, but noted that opportunity often abounds in overlooked industries like his.

“Eventually smart minds are going to come down to niche industries like mine and they're going to consolidate to a handful of players. I want to make sure that LuXout is one of those players or that we sell to one of those players.” Vann recommends Darden students interested in Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) begin networking and analyzing deals as soon as their second year of business school, after they’ve learned the core financial and modeling skills in the first year and the Darden academic load is less intense. 
“Look at the data on a bunch of businesses, even if you know nothing about the industry. Have the conversations, talk to a lot of banks and keep good track of what you’re learning,” he suggested. “If you do that for a while, you’re going to get a good sense of how to sift and sort deals.”

Finally, he said successful ETA requires two skill sets— dealmaking and operations.

“It can become addictive to chase the deal, but it’s also important to slow down and actually operate. My advice as an entrepreneur is to be ready for both sides of the equation.”

No matter where his career next takes him, Vann believes that the ETA experience has taught him so much.“ Entrepreneurship puts value into your bones. Even if I sold my company tomorrow and went to go work somewhere else as an employee or a CEO, I know I’d add quite a bit of value from these experiences,” Vann posited.

“If you do it right, it’s not as risky as people think.”