Jan 09, 2019
Company’s omni-commerce product content solutions achieve impressive growth
PRINCETON, N.J.—Jan. 9, 2019 -- Edison Partners today announced the successful exit of ItemMaster, the leading product content management and data technology leader for the CPG and retail industry, to Gladson, a Chicago-based portfolio company of The Jordan Company and Wicks Capital Partners. The transaction generated a strong return for Edison with an IRR of 33 percent. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Since Edison’s initial growth investment in 2016, ItemMaster’s SaaS revenue grew more than 500 percent. The company executed a rapid expansion strategy, including building cutting-edge solutions and accelerating the total number of manufacturer brands and verified products on their platform. More than 600 retailers, agencies and mobile app developers now access ItemMaster’s certified brand content through their open exchange network.
“ItemMaster has developed a truly innovative product content platform and rich data set that retailers and brands consistently rely on to drive profitable and sustainable category growth across all distribution channels,” said David Nevas, Partner at Edison Partners who led the investment. “We’re excited for CEO Dev Ganesan and the ItemMaster management team, who have done a tremendous job in leading the company’s market expansion and delivering an outstanding return for all stakeholders.”
Based in Chicago, ItemMaster provides a complete content management platform and services to help brands and retailers compete in today’s data-driven market. Originally incubated inside Peapod, the largest online grocery delivery service, ItemMaster’s cloud-based solutions enable retailers and brands to verify, share and manage their product information and custom-branded content to enhance the shopping experience and drive growth in traditional and ecommerce channels.
“Our goal was to make the manufacturer’s product information available and useful to any retailer, e-commerce partner or mobile application,” said Dev Ganesan, CEO of ItemMaster. “We are thankful to Edison Partners for recognizing our expertise and passion for retail and data-driven product innovation, and we look forward to continuing to scale to meet the evolving needs of our clients.”
ItemMaster co-founder Andrew Parkinson added: “This wouldn’t have happened without Edison's thoughtful guidance and support. I am thankful to David and the entire Edison team for their hard work and dedication to our business.”
Edison Partners has financed and guided more than 200 private companies, a third of which have been in the enterprise solutions space. ItemMaster is the firm’s second exit of a Chicago-based company in the last two years. Over the last 6 months, Edison has made multiple investments in the Midwest including Chicago-based Bento for Business, Grand Rapids-based Blue Medora, and Indiana-based Sigstr and Emplify.
Edison Partners has been actively investing in SaaS business applications and data solutions arena for more than a decade with successful exits, such as NetProspex to Dun & Bradstreet, Salsa Labs to Accel KKR, Uptivity to inContact (now NICE), Vocus’ public offering (now Cision), and ItemMaster to Gladson. Active investments in these categories include Terminus in account-based marketing, PathFactory in content insight and activation, Jornaya in consumer journey insights, Sigstr in relationship intelligence, and ExecVision in conversation intelligence.
Edison’s current enterprise solutions portfolio otherwise includes All Traffic Solutions, Blue Medora, Bricata, Emplify, eSentire, Giant Oak, and Predata. Other notable exits in the sector include Archive Systems, Billtrust, InSoft, Logfire, Notable Solutions, Operative, Tangoe, Telarix, VirtualEdge, and VFA.
About ItemMaster
ItemMaster is a cloud-based product content platform for brands, retailers, and consumers. With the most comprehensive source of brand-verified product content, we are able to fuel all corners of retail and beyond. ItemMaster’s flexible content creation offerings mean brands and retailers can make strategic business choices, in terms of content, speed to content activation and market readiness, and cost-effectiveness. For more information please visit www.itemmaster.com.
About Edison Partners
For more than 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams grow and scale successful companies. The firm’s investment team brings extensive investing and operating experience to each investment. Through a unique combination of growth capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of operating centers of excellence, the Edison Director Network, and executive education programs, Edison employs a truly integrated approach to accelerating growth and creating value for businesses. A team of experts in financial technology, healthcare IT and enterprise solution sectors, Edison targets high-growth companies with $5 to $25 million in revenue; investments also include buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.
Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregated market value exceeding $10 billion. Edison Partners is based in Princeton, NJ and manages more than $1.4 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.