Who knows who owns or runs G&S North at this point, the initial selling price was a joke, not worth half of what they were asking especially w/o real estate but I digress.
I called back in September and left my name and phone number with their business broker listed on their home page and was met with a very sarcastic, patronizing and unprofessional individual. Probably the same dipshit that set the listing price. To my knowledge business brokers are not held to the same rules as real estate brokers and therefore there are no laws, only ones moral values, in play. This Bob 'The Bozo' Lucido they have representing them is not doing them any favors, hence the place is still for sale a year or more after the initial listing was made. It is further apparent that their broker is useless by the mere fact that he lost his businesses domain name, probably by forgetting to renew it.
In any case my guess is the reason the place hasn't sold is the sellers are entrusting the sale to the broker. When I called in September I made a two part verbal offer to either a) purchase the inventory at its' wholesale value which was TBD or b) purchase the business and inventory at market value with 50% owner financing. Not a bad initial offer without seeing any form of historical sales figures I thought. My offer was met with this fat fvcks attitude and sarcasm and basically telling me that he assumed I had never owned or operated any business and that he was not even going to take my offer to the sellers.
I was pretty pissed after talking to him and if I had more time in my life to waste I would have pursued contacting the sellers directly to let them know that their half-ass broker was not looking out for their best interest by deciding what offers he would or would not let them know about. The reason I brought up real estate brokers vs business brokers earlier is because if a real estate broker refused to bring the sellers an offer he/she could and probably would probably lose their broker license for performing such an act. Even if the seller says don't bring me offers below $X they broker must tell them of any and all offers by law.
Sorry if this seems like a rant but it really didn't begin as one and I don't mean to turn it into one but for the people saying good, bad or indifferent things about this place I offer this mans observations and the following opinions which I've formed from those observations.
If anyone working there, especially directly involved with ownership, seem sour it is probably because they just want out of the business. The people you deal with there who people have said are kind and helpful are either people who just work there with nothing riding on whether the business sells or not, or they are just really fantastic people who do not wear their heart on their sleeve and are really good at covering up their emotions so their displeasure in being unable to sell the business does not show to customers. In regards to the absurd asking price for the business alone w/o real estate of $349,000 that is almost positively the "appraised value" set by their business joker, er I mean broker. And lastly, if you are buying or selling a business steer clear of Bob Lucido.