While business owners work hard to make their company profitable over the long term, they may not think much about the day whey may have to close the doors for good. Quitting Business Inc., based in, of all places, Hansville, helps retailers liquidate their stores with the highest net return possible.

“In the majority of cases, the owners are nervous because they have their net worth tied into their business,” said Dwight McCarty, president of Quitting Business. “When they pull the key out of the door the last day, we want them to be in the best financial shape possible.”

McCarty and his business partner, Mike Lee, devise an actual business plan once a company hires them. The plan includes details like how long each markdown stage will last, how long the liquidation sale is and when it starts, how it will be promoted, and much more. To create the plan, they look at everything from how old the business is and what financial state it’s in, to gross sales for five years, inventory on hand, and nearest competition. All these aspects, and many others, will impact each retailer’s exit strategy, McCarty said.

“When you do a liquidation, it’s still retail but virtually all we do is different. A retailer spends a lot of time figuring out how to keep doors open, produce profits and ensure the longevity of the business. We look at it from the point of how quick we can kill it,” he said.

Running a closing sale, he said, is much like running an everyday one with respect to customer service. The store must be neat, pleasant, with items easy to find and lines not too long if the core customers are to come back again. After all, a liquidation sale will last a few weeks, and no one will come back if their first visit was negative.

Because of that, Quitting Business controls the number of people on opening week through advertising, so they don’t have an influx of customers who can’t find a place to park or create too big a shopping crowd.

“In a liquidation, the core group of customers is critical,” McCarty said.

McCarty himself got into the business after hiring a liquidator for his retail store in Montana. Of his three stores, one went to his daughter, the second one he tried to sell “but it didn’t work,” and for the third one he hired a professional. “He invited me into a partnership and that’s what I’ve been doing for 11 years,” he said.

McCarty moved to Hansville “to escape the cold,” though these days, being semi-retired, he escapes it even more by taking working vacations to Mexico and such. The Internet and cell phones have made business easy for a company like his, because he can work from just about anywhere in the world.

Part of his semi-retirement means he no longer spends 90 to 100 days out of the year traveling around the country to be on site at the liquidation store. Lee does that instead, and McCarty uses “brain power instead of muscle,” focusing on the analysis part, he said.

Quitting Business, which only works with businesses that have inventory, helped close the doors for Port Orchard’s Cinema One, Kingston’s Appletree General Store, the Allyn True Value and others. McCarty says he knows of only about eight liquidators nationwide, but Quitting Business is unique due to the business plans it writes.