Welcome to The Business Buying Academy with Sieva Kozinsky. Here's what we have in store for you today:

• Want to get your business in front of my audience?
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• This soy sauce empire started 400+ years ago
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• Building a hotel empire

🔑Market your business to Sieva's Business Business Academy audience

We began testing with our first advertisers last year, and it turns out this community is incredibly engaged. With 70,000 operators, investors, and "acquisition curious" reading this letter each week, we drove customers for advertisers ranging from Vesto (treasury management platform) to Mainshares (sourcing investors for SMB acquisitions).

We are looking for a couple new advertisers to partner with this year as we launch a few new products.

Interested in marketing your business to this audience? Just respond to this newsletter and say hi.

🔑 A Consolidation 400 years in the Making

Today I want to look at one of the most unique consolidations I've ever read about.

Imagine you start a small family farm in the 1600s.

And over 400 years later, it's not only still operating, but is the foundation of a company that does billions in sales and employs 7,000+ people.

Let's take a look.

Creating a Soy Sauce Empire

You've probably seen this bottle before.

It's the best-selling brand of soy sauce in the world, Kikkoman.

But its story started over 400 years ago with eight rival Japanese families, who each guarded their own secret, unique soy sauce recipes for centuries.

After years of battling for market share, they did the unthinkable in 1917.

All eight of them merged.

The transaction created Noda Shoyu Co., Ltd., the direct predecessor of today’s Kikkoman Corporation.

The original families still collectively control about 20% of the company more than a century later (the largest single shareholder group), while Kikkoman dominates the global soy-sauce market.

Their businesses survived wars, earthquakes, recessions, wars, and industrialization.

And then they became stronger together.

They competed fiercely, but they all used the same centuries-old double-fermentation method that made Kikkoman-style soy sauce darker, richer, and more complex than anything else on the market.

During the late 1800s, the companies were competing over the same local soybeans, wheat, and water from the same section of the Edo River.

They were cannibalizing each other. And it gave an advantage to the other inferior soy sauce makers in other parts of the region.

During the early 1900s, Japan was modernizing fast. Factories were scaling. Railroads were replacing barges. Small family brewers faced pressure: bigger competitors, inconsistent quality, and the need for capital.

Eight family companies sat down and pooled everything:

• Their breweries
• Their secret recipes and koji molds
• Their customer lists
• Their land and equipment

They formed Noda Shoyu Co., Ltd. with ¥7 million in capital (a fortune at the time).

The new entity was essentially a holding structure from day one: one unified company owning all the old family operations as operating units.

The name “Kikkoman” (turtle shell + ten thousand) had already been the Mogi family’s premium trademark, symbolizing longevity and good fortune.

It became the corporate brand in 1964 (full name change to Kikkoman Corporation in 1980).

Within years, the merged company was Japan’s #1 soy-sauce producer, a position it has never lost.

The company has also branched out into other businesses, like wine, rice, and restaurants.

In the most recent fiscal year, Kikkoman generated ¥709 billion in revenue (about $4.5 billion USD).

While this is an unusual story, consolidations happen all the time.

It's one of the best strategies when buying businesses.

Here are just a few of the benefits, from an investor's perspective:

• Higher Profit Margins & Cash Flow Generation. Consolidation reduces head-to-head competition, allowing the surviving players to raise prices, cut redundant costs, and achieve economies of scale.
• Pricing Power & Reduced Cyclical Risk. Fewer competitors = greater ability to pass on inflation or raw-material costs to customers.
• Competitive Moats. The consolidated leader gains network effects, brand dominance, data advantages, and bargaining power with suppliers.
• Synergies. Cost synergies (overlapping overhead, duplicated satellites, overlapping routes) and revenue synergies (cross-selling, unified content).
• Higher Valuation Multiples. Consolidated industry leaders trade at premium EV/EBITDA or P/E multiples (frequently 2–5 turns higher).
• M&A Optionality & Platform Value. Investors benefit from a built-in growth engine: bolt-on acquisitions at lower multiples than the platform itself, creating immediate value accretion.

🔑 How to Buy & Build Hotels

I chatted with Jake Wurzak, CEO of DoveHill, about how he builds and buys hotels.

He's bought dozens of hotels, built new ones, and understands the hospitality world as well as anyone.

Jake told me about how he invests in hotels, a joint venture that almost went terribly wrong, and he even critiques the hotel we bought a while ago in Montauk, New York.

Give this one a watch if you're interested in real estate investing.

​Watch on YouTube​

Have a great day,

Sieva

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Disclaimer: nothing here is investment advice. Please do your own research. The information above is just for information and learning.

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