Paris / Ede, June 27th 2022
A new chapter begins
SOLO Group and midocean are joining forces. On June 16th, SOLO Group has acquired Mid Ocean Group.
For several years already, the promotional product market in Europe is changing rapidly. The demand is evolving boldly and fast. It is today essential for our customers to be able to depend on suppliers that can effectively deliver the best service. When it comes to textile, suppliers need to invest in enhancing their brands awareness and desirability and in developing the perfect products fitting markets needs and expectations. This way, customers, whether they are distributors, resellers, printers, or workwear specialists, can focus their attention on selling. Nurturing this virtuous circle shall benefit the entire market. Therefore, suppliers need to continuously reflect on how best to support customers in this changing environment.
To better address the promotional market evolution and resellers requirement for a one stop shop experience, SOLO Group and midocean engaged in 2020 in a commercial cooperation. This way they could explore the compatibility of both companies when offering a selection of the SOLO Group portfolio including decoration to resellers in Europe. This cooperation was very successful, with a positive halo effect towards the entire distribution network of SOLO Group. Moreover, both companies appeared a perfect fit in terms of geography, operational set-up and company values motivating SOLO Group to pursue the acquisition of midocean early 2022.
Alain Milgrom, president-founder SOLO Group: “During the past 10 years, midocean has impressively taken a leading position as multi-category and full-service supplier of hard goods in Europe. The still fragmented promotional market today is more and more demanding service and efficiencies across the value chain. Our objective has always been to deliver the best service to our customers, always acting in “Fair Spirit”. This includes offering a full-service solution to stimulate the appeal for promotional textiles with end-users. When combining the strengths of both companies, this is exactly what I envision to happen, in the best interests of all our customers. We do believe that the combination of our companies will enable and boost SOLO Group’s brand awareness and desirability, creating benefit to our entire network of customers.”
Audélia Krief, ceo of SOLO Group continues: “midocean is a fantastic opportunity for our Group to diversify adding a completely new product category and service, which is printed hard goods. By investing severely in process and system automation and digitalisation, midocean has indeed proven to be the benchmark in terms of portfolio accessibility, print quality consistency and delivery lead times. When combining both companies, customers will have direct access to extensive inventories of promotional textiles that will be decorated and drop shipped to end-users as efficiently and quickly as resellers have become used to for hard goods. Furthermore, with textile, we are addressing very diverse markets such as workwear, souvenir, merchandising, print on demand, retail/e-tail, etc. We will therefore continue to nurture our current distribution network with the best products.”
Stephen Gibson, ceo of midocean finally adds: “it is for the previously mentioned reasons that midocean has always envisioned a collaboration with an established textile specialist of promotional textiles. This will instantly strengthen the company’s presentation as a multi-category-specialist supplier, resulting in the most comprehensive item portfolio in the industry, instantly available including print/decoration. SOLO Group is one of the leading textile specialists of customizable textiles in Europe and I am delighted to have found in SOLO Group the partner to pursue this vision.”
About SOLO Group: company founder Alain Milgrom started the company in 1991 in Paris having the mission to bring fashion and ethical ways of working to the promotional textiles market. He then launched the SOL’S brand which, for more than 30 years, has been shaking up the established and developing customisable clothing market. In 2020, SOLO Group was created to launch 3 new brands: RTP Apparel, Atelier Textile Français and NEOBLU and Joy Thai was fully acquired. Find more information at: sologroup-paris.com.
Head office: Paris-France
Size: revenue 2021/employees: €160mio, >200 employees
About midocean: for more than 50 years, midocean has been one of the leading suppliers in the European market of promotional items. As multi-category specialist and full-service supplier of hard goods, midocean makes promotional items the most cost-effective, sustainable and fastest accessible marketing tool. From 8 local sales offices, throughout Europe, supported by the most automated and technically advanced warehouse and printing facility in the market and more than 800 employees midocean serves more than 9.000 customers in the EU. Find more information at: midocean.com.
Head office: Ede-Netherlands
Size: revenue 2021/employees: €130mio, >800 employees
Published on: June 27th, 2022
