DiggyPOD

DiggyPOD prints books for people the big platforms overlook: church congregations, dentists writing board-exam guides, families printing their histories, cookbook authors, and an Arizona tribal community that publishes its own heritage textbooks because no commercial alternative exists. Every book is printed and bound in-house in Tecumseh, Michigan, whether softcover, hardcover, or coil-bound, which is how the company protects its quality and its turnaround times. It employs no salespeople. Demand arrives entirely through search and word of mouth, roughly half of all orders come from repeat customers, and more than 50,000 authors have printed with the company.

Tim Simpson started in printing at 19, cutting paper on the floor of a commercial shop, and worked his way up to running sales and operations over the following decade. In 2001 he bought a small quick-print business of his own, a shop with roots back to 1988, put it online earlier than almost anyone in the industry, and in 2004 pivoted into book printing, starting with a secondhand bindery machine he bought out of a barn for $750. By 2012 he had sold off the commercial printing work entirely to go all-in on books. Two decades in, with a general manager running day-to-day operations and his energy pulled toward other ventures, he was ready to hand it off, with two conditions that never moved: the company stays in Tecumseh, and the team stays employed.

DiggyPOD's profile went live on Rejigg in the fall of 2024 and drew 10 serious buyers and 4 LOIs within weeks. Tim turned down offers that leaned on seller financing and held out for a buyer with real conviction and cash at close. He met Anica John in November 2024, ran a best-and-final round in early December, and signed her LOI within days of it. The months that followed covered SBA 7(a) underwriting, a quality-of-earnings review, and the normal grind of a financed deal, and the sale closed in June 2025. The employees stayed, the office stayed local, and Tim stayed on as a minority partner helping with marketing. The seller paid no brokerage fees.

Anica John came to DiggyPOD after a career most searchers would envy: she trained as a lawyer, built and sold a legal services firm, helped scale a climate-tech company, co-founded a startup that reached a billion-dollar valuation, and held senior product roles at Walmart Labs, Disney Streaming, and Amazon. Books run in the family, with a husband midway through writing his own with an academic publisher. She bought DiggyPOD to own and operate for the long haul, kept Tim invested as a minority shareholder, and stepped into the business the team already knew, in the town where it was built. The total acquisition price (including real estate, working capital, and transaction costs) was close to $10M, financed largely through a traditional SBA 7(a) loan and pari passu debt.