Five brands already belong to the Celebrate Company – now another is being added: Atelier Rosemood. With the acquisition of the company, which is one of the best-known suppliers of high-quality stationery and photo products in France, Celebrate is taking a further step in its growth strategy. The stated goal: to become one of the largest European players in the market for digital photo services. The company has paid quite a bit for this.
The exact takeover sum is not known, but according to the Celebrate Company, it is a “medium, double-digit amount” that they have invested in their “desired candidate”. Founded in 2010, Atelier Rosemood now employs 120 people at two sites in and around Nantes and operates in four countries: France, Germany, Belgium and the UK. Economically, the company is doing well, having recorded a recent growth rate of 17 percent, as well as annual sales of 13.5 million euros, according to the Celebrate team.
Double-digit growth
For the Celebrate Company, which according to its own information last year itself achieved annual sales of more than 70 million euros and growth of almost 30 percent despite the pandemic conditions, the takeover means a nice plus in all areas. For example, the company expects total annual sales to rise to more than 100 million euros in the current year. In addition, with its now six brands, Celebrate employs a total of almost 500 people in Germany and France and together serves more than three million customers in Europe.
The acquisition of Atelier Rosemood is therefore an important step in the group’s efforts to become one of the leading suppliers of stationery and photo products in Europe. “With Rosemood, we can expand our product portfolio enormously, especially in the very exciting category of photo books, and thus further drive our growth in Europe,” says Patrick Leibold, co-CEO of the Celebrate Company.
The same mindset
In addition to the key economic figures and the strategically sensible addition to the company’s own product portfolio, however, it is important to the Celebrate Company that there is also a cultural fit among the associated companies: “Back then, we founded the Celebrate Company to help people turn their significant life moments into beautiful memories. Rosemood follows the same values, and we share the same mission and vision,” explains co-CEO Steffen Behn the background to the acquisition. For Rosemood itself, the merger with the German group offers a strengthening of its own brand in Europe, as Managing Director Hélène Germain explains.
Growth through acquisitions
Just in the last two to three years, the Celebrate Company, which emerged from “Die Kartenmacherei” founded in 2010, has made a name for itself: at the beginning of 2020, it took over the digital printing division of Straub Druck+Medien AG in Schramberg, which now trades as Celebrate Digital Printing GmbH and will move into a new building this year. A year later, the group brought the private equity company EMZ Partners (also from France) on board in order – as it was said at the time – to be able to grow faster. This was followed a few months ago by the acquisition of Hamburg-based Mintkind GmbH & Co. KG, which specializes in childhood gifts and memory books. But Celebrate itself is not unknown in France either: The corporate group has already been represented on the market since 2014 with the stationery store “faireparterie”.
Alongside Celebrate Digital Printing, Die Kartenmacherei, faireparterie, Mintkind and Atelier Rosemood, the Celebrate Apps form the sixth brand in the Celebrate Company’s portfolio. And presumably one can be curious what the next steps of Patrick Leibold and Steffen Behn will be.
