Mergers & Acquisitions

It's been an eventful couple of years for cross-channel specialty coffee retailer Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR). From acquisitions (three in the last 18 months) to the launch of a B-to-B wholesale website, GMCR has been busy growing its 29-year-old brand.

Launched on June 23, 2009, as an online marketplace not unlike eBay, Alice.com enables CPG manufacturers to sell their household essentials — think toothpaste, laundry detergent, trash bags, toilet paper, etc. — direct to consumers. By making thousands of products typically not found online available for purchase, Alice.com has tapped into an underserved market, albeit surprisingly so to the company's founders.

Retail sales may have recovered nicely in the past year, but a resurgence in acquisitions and IPO activity may have to wait until next year due to tougher financing and market volatility. The number of U.S. retail deals has totaled 113 so far this year, down slightly from 120 deals in the same period a year ago, according to data from Thomson Reuters. "There's very little M&A activity. There's very little bankruptcy activity. There's very little retail closure activity, and there's very little retail expansion activity," said Hilco Real Estate Executive Vice President Nina Kampler.

PC Mall announced today that Sarcom, one of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, has acquired substantially all of the assets of Network Services Plus as of June 8, 2010. The terms of the transaction include an initial purchase price of $7.8 million, less a customary hold-back to settle indemnity claims. PC Mall is also extinguishing substantially all of NSPI’s indebtedness, which net of acquired working capital is approximately $1.3 million. Pursuant to the terms of the asset purchase agreement, NSPI’s shareholders can earn additional consideration based on the performance of the NSPI business over the next two years.

It must be a sign of the times when even a profitable catalog business can’t sell. That was Sportif USA CEO John Kirsch’s position when I caught up with him just before Thanksgiving. He’d just put the Waterfronts Nautical catalog on the selling block. And as he aimed to sell the 21-year-old nautical-themed apparel catalog started by his father, Kirsch reflected on some hard lessons.

Fresh off the sale of their last turnaround project — the reinvigorated J&L Industrial Supply to MSC Industrial Direct in June 2006 — Chuck Moyer and Mike Wessner set their sights on a new opportunity. After an exhaustive search process, these two B-to-B cataloging lifers targeted 63-year-old Conney Safety Products. In a deal financed by the private equity firm CI Capital, Moyer and Wessner acquired the company from its parent firm, K+K America, in October 2007.

For many multichannel merchants, maintaining a profitable business has become increasingly difficult in recent months. While attracting and retaining customers will always be vital to catalogers, today’s economy makes it crucial to have a solid understanding of financial planning and budgeting in order to achieve long-term success. Here are five tips for catalog/multichannel merchants on how to develop and improve budgeting and financing strategies to help weather a down economic climate. 1. Plan not to fail. According to the most recent Small Business Monitor, a semiannual survey of business owners conducted by American Express OPEN, uncertain economic conditions and the rising costs of doing

For the most part, multichannel marketers who don’t operate national retail chains have had it pretty good since the industry beat back North Dakota — and, effectively, the other 49 states — nearly 16 years ago in Quill v. North Dakota. This, of course, was the landmark case that upheld the law that it’s unconstitutional for states to require out-of-state merchants with no physical presence in such states to collect sales, or use, taxes on remotely placed purchases. But earlier this month, the state of New York passed the Internet Sales Tax provision, which requires out-of-state online merchants to collect sales taxes from New

In the first installment of this three-part series on how catalogers’ pricing strategies are evolving in response to the Web’s effect on branded products, let’s examine how catalogers have been put in this precarious situation and what they need to do to remain profitable. As the price-comparison engines turn more branded products into commodities, what’s your catalog’s best pricing strategy? Most catalogers’ current pricing strategy is to have the lowest market price available — either matching or beating any competitor’s best price. This policy is typically supported with a lowest price guarantee. It’s becoming common for most catalogers and Web merchants to offer

I like this question. I also like the related question, “If you had to reduce your marketing spend by $100K, where would you cut?”
To answer either of these questions it’s necessary to have a good understanding of the incremental return on investment (ROI) on each of your marketing activities. I’m always surprised how often that starts with “I think … ” It makes me worry and, as a consultant, probe deeper to see what’s really known vs. what’s just “felt.”
The sad reality is that most B-to-B direct marketers today aren’t working from hard facts in this area. They’re operating from