SOLO Group acquires Mid Ocean Group

Following a successful commercial co-operation agreement in 2020, SOLO Group has completed the acquisition of midocean.

The commercial co-operation agreement allowed both companies to explore their compatibility when offering a selection of the SOLO Group portfolio to resellers in Europe.

The co-operation was successful, with a positive halo effect towards the entire distribution network of SOLO Group. Moreover, both companies were a perfect fit in terms of geography, operational set-up and company values.

Alain Milgrom, president and founder of  SOLO Group, said: “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 at 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, continued: “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, added: “It is for the previously mentioned reason 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 multicategory-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 customisable textiles in Europe and I am delighted to have found in SOLO Group the partner to pursue this vision.”