It has acquired an undisclosed number of shares in the start-up and is providing the company with a growth budget “in the millions”.
Spread Group said the aim of the “long-term collaboration” is to offer customers of all sizes an extensive portfolio of services that builds on both companies’ existing offerings.
In addition to the individual design and production of high-quality corporate fashion and merchandising products, this also includes the digitalisation of existing internal processes on the customer side.
For example, the digital B2B merchandising platform can be used to provide support for onboarding processes, send automated gift boxes at specified times (e.g., birthdays or customer events), or make merchandise available to a limited customer group via white-label online stores.
Both businesses have complementary expertise and will work closely together on operational issues as well as on the further internationalisation of Mula.
In particular, Mula is expected to benefit from the global production and distribution infrastructure of Spread Group.
Julian de Grahl, CEO of Spread Group, said: “Mula and Spread Group are perfect partners; both companies operate in a customer-centric manner and have repeatedly demonstrated their innovative strength.
“The topic of sustainable corporate gifting has gained a lot of importance in recent years as a tool for customer and employee loyalty. We create enormous added value for our customers, through the digitalisation of time-consuming manual processes in marketing, sales, or HR departments, which can result in a significant gain in efficiency.”
Marco Lawrenz, co-founder and CEO of Mula, which was founded in 2018, added: “We cannot imagine a better partner than Spread Group; 20 years of industry experience, market leader and active worldwide. Moreover, known for its special reliability in the market.
“At the same time, Spread Group can benefit from our broad solutions for merchandise user cases in all business areas. Through this partnership, the digitalisation and automation of currently very manual processes, e.g., by integrating HR, marketing or sales software, we can deliver real added value for companies of all sizes.
“The combination of the expertise and the services of both companies is a forward-looking move for the entire industry.”
Spread Group was founded in 2002 in Leipzig, Germany. With its brands Spreadshirt, Teamshirts, and Spreadshop, it now operates five production sites in the US and Europe and has annual revenues of over €175m (£151m).
Last year Spreadshirt launched embroidery textiles finishing for runs as low as one in all of its European markets after investing in Tajima machinery.
