Crisis, what crisis? Moonpig to go IPO and become the next unicorn
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Moonpig, the UK-based online personalized greeting cards and gift retailer, is planning to go public at a valuation that is expected to surpass £1B ($1.4B), according to British news outlets.
Moonpig started as a personalized photo greeting cards company 20 years ago. It since also added gifts, such as flowers, champagne and chocolates to its product lineup.
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Personalized photo printing company Photobox acquired the company in 2011 for £120m. In 2019 Photobox ownership spun Moonpig off again as a separate company, along with Greetz, a Dutch greeting card and personalized gift company that Photobox had acquired in 2017.
Why going public now in the midst of an economic crisis triggered by COVID and Brexit?
“What crisis?” Moonpig management might reply …
Just in the first two months of the UK-wide lockdown last year, Moonpig added one million customers. In 2020, the company delivered 45M cards in the UK and the Netherlands, purchased by 12M customers. This also translated into a surge in sales and profits: in the year leading up to April 2020, Moonpig made £44M worth of profit on the back of sales of £173M (44% up YoY).
The takeaway? There are actually two.
First, while everything is going digital and virtual in our challenging pandemic times, we also do see a resurgence of the appeal of personalized tactile products (a sentiment also found in a Fujifilm Instax-commissioned survey conducted among 2K UK adults during the holiday season). Moonpig has cleverly leveraged this trend.
Secondly, lately we’ve seen a flood of acquisitions in our photo ecosystem (including some exciting announcements listed below). While the advantages in terms of economies of scale and access to new technologies or markets are easy to imagine, we shouldn’t forget that the opposite route the owners of Photobox took (disinvesting the more profitable division, while adding a closely aligned player from a different geo (Greetz) and putting this focused unit on its own feet) could very well be the best route to take!
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CaptureLife. Exiting. Congratulations to past Visual 1st presenter and sponsor CaptureLife, which is acquired by volume photography software vendors PhotoLynx and ImageQuix, companies within the Alpine Software Group (ASG) portfolio. ASG buys, builds, and operates market-leading vertical SaaS companies. It acquired ImageQuix in 2018 and PhotoLynx in 2019. CaptureLife provides photo sharing and engagement technologies for companies such as resorts, cruise lines, sports, entertainment and experience brands.
Perfect Corp. Raising $. Perfect Corp., developer of virtual beauty app YouCam Makeup, closes a $50 million Series C led by Goldman Sachs. As general manager Wayne Liu commented at Visual 1st last year, COVID accelerated the adoption of his company’s virtual beauty try-on apps, as the pandemic has forced retailers to boost their online strategies through new ways to capture shoppers’ attention in lieu of in-store sampling.
Perfect Corp. Going video. And where is all that money going? For one, Perfect Corp. is expanding into video, as it just announced its YouCam Video app. YouCam Video lets users easily edit portrait-style footage with makeup, reshape facial features on selfie videos, and add video effects.
Vespera. Smart telescope + camera. Why can’t cameras be smarter? Well, if you’re into stargazing, there is now the $1499 Vespera, a hybrid smart telescope and camera, which allows you to watch or capture the galaxy in the company’s app on your connected device. Just set up the tripod using the adjustable legs and press the button. Vespera then comes to life and calibrates itself through the GPS of your device and Vespera’s Star Field Recognition technology. You will also get personalized recommendations on what to observe according to your geolocation and the astronomical calendar. Vespera is CES 2021 Best of Innovation award winner Digital Imaging or Photography.
Best,
Hans Hartman
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