The London-based print marketing communications company has taken a 51% stake in the 30-staff business, based in Old Street, London, in a deal that could see the two eventually merge under one roof at Paperhat’s global headquarters in Covent Garden.
“It’s very much a fusion of cultures, their creative outlook is the same as ours,” said Paperhat chief executive Tim Peppiatt. “It’s a complementary fit to what we do but it gives us enhanced scale. They have an enormously good reputation in the luxury brand market and there’s a real emphasis on quality of packaging and rather than looking at making things cheaper, getting a better ROI. And that’s what we are about,” he explained.
Peppiatt continued: “Decoupling has started to come of age, with creative production becoming in many instances a more efficient alternative to the ad agency. Creative services have really been procurement-led until now and we want to create creative services-led procurement.”
“We crafted the phrase ‘creative production house’ when Nirvana started 12 years ago, to cover all aspects of brand launches and multi-channel activity,” said Nirvana CPH managing partner Gary Stiff. “To move things forward we needed a global partner who shared in our passion to create. So we are very excited to join the Paperhat Group as through its network we can enable global launches for all our customers.”
Peppiatt said that since finalising the deal a few weeks ago, it was business as usual as far as daily operations were concerned, and that it could take up to a year to fully assimilate the new addition, which is the latest in a string of acquisitions it has carried out in the past few years.
“This one has had a long gestation period because we were bringing the businesses together and there were two lots of due diligence to consider, but I think the painstaking way we’ve gone about it will pay enormous dividends, and is already doing so,” said Peppiatt.
Last year the company acquired Despark in Belgium and Manchester-based CTI Digital and Peppiatt said the group had its eye on another four or five acquisitions both in the UK and abroad.
“In 2009 we started a new strategy with limited capital to complement our on-site procurement set-up,” he said. “We have also changed our business model and we are finding it a lot easier to attract capital. We have increased client numbers to almost 400 long-term clients and we are a much more attractive proposition. People will start to see a much quicker acceleration in our business now,” Peppiatt added.
On the fall-out from the EU referendum vote, Peppiatt said of the global firm: "Brexit has had less impact than workplace pension and the ever increasing business rate taxes. Those are the real issues for us, to be honest.
“Currently there is no impact, in fact there are more opportunities. We’ll find a way around it. I’m sure we’ll lose out in some areas but win in others and it’s up to entrepreneurs to navigate around it.”
Paperhat Group has a turnover of £41m, with subsidiary Paperhat Communications contributing around £30m, and employs 230 people across its sites in Covent Garden, Sofia, Hong Kong, Warsaw and New York.
