The Clarity Difference

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Clarity is the only Buy Side M&A advisory firm that began as a market research firm. 

Actionable Market Intelligence is in our DNA - including Competitive Intelligence work and probing Voice of the Customer research.

We understand that market size, share, growth and other data points are largely useless without a robust definition of the Market and its Segments.

Clarity's core business for the past decade has been targeted Platform Acquisition Searches.

We approach Platform Searches differently than other search firms or internal corporate development teams - leveraging our Domain Expertise and fresh research. This enables Clarity to Engage business owners who are generally tired of calls from investors who do not understand their market.

Clarity began with 3 clients - Dover, Eaton and Emerson. In 1994, Private Equity was not a significant investor type.

Given our origin as a market research firm working for Diversified Industrials - we witnessed the ascent of Danaher and the rise of Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprises in China. Inexorably, these Macro Trends led to the Divestiture of many Clarity clients to Private Equity firms - the best of which applied the Danaher methods - drawn from the Toyota school of Lean Operations.

Clarity worked with Anvil Capital to help scale its commercial HVAC service Platform - AirTemp. 

In January 2025, PremiStar acquired AirTemp. Clarity continues to work with the CEO of AirTemp and the Corporate Development team at PremiStar to accelerate growth in the Northeast US and expand niche services such as Energy Management and Indoor Air Quality.

Clarity's Domain Expertise enables us to explore targeted growth opportunities across adjacent markets in other regions.

Clarity worked with Luther King Capital Management on Feasibility Research to carve out the commercial building controls division of Wilson Mohr and we subsequently sourced the first Add-On Acquisition (Amcon Controls 2019)

In advance of the process to sell BCS, Clarity conducted Add-On Research across 6 adjacent markets, including Energy Management, Lighting Controls & Perimeter Security along with Introductions to leading private companies to serve as a Pipeline for the next owner.

While Clarity's fiduciaries are technically tied to the Buyer, our longitudinal work to follow leading Founder Led companies in attractive market niches puts us in the position to coach Owners on the true value of their company and how to achieve the best outcome in a majority recap Transaction.

Based on our Search Mandates with Investors -  including Corporate, PE and Private Companies - we find the right time to match the Trust and Goals of both Buyer and Seller. This approach enables us to facilitate winning business combinations.

Across the years, Clarity has enlisted many industry experts, such as Tom Ramsey who was heading Sales & Marketing for Kaydon Corp when Clarity was hired to help them find a Filtration company to acquire. The vision was to acquire a 3rd Filtration unit to complement Purafil and Kaydon Custom Filtration and create a 3rd Segment to stave off being acquired themselves for their bearing assets. 

When Clarity began in 1994, we worked with Elaine Maurer, the former Manager of Market Research for McKesson and she taught Sheiman about Voice of the Customer Research. Some of her Verbatims would be longer than an entire set of interviews from the same Discussion Guide that she developed - when anyone else conducted the interviews.

Sheiman formed Clarity in June 1994, after starting his career at Harlan Brown in 1988. After getting his MBA at Berkeley and working at Logitech, he realized that social engineering and Corporate Espionage is more a Risk than a Reward and he formed InfoScreen to help clients train their employees not to divulge company secrets over the phone.