"I was backing a sponsor buying an HVAC business in Tampa and the broker was marketing that their margins were low due to low retail pricing. Obviously, we were skeptical. To test the claim, we went on Upwork and hired three Tampa homeowners to get three quotes on replacing their older HVAC systems. Indeed, the target company was 40-60% lower than their competitors and, in one case, strongly disagreed that a replacement made sense. Interestingly, the target company was SO low that it led to questions of competence – all our testers “picked” the second-most-expensive vendor."
--> Example of a low-hanging fruit (price increase) in the lower-middle market.
