Emerald Acquires PlumRiver LLC to Expand Digital Commerce Capabilities

Extends PlumRiver’s Elastic Suite B2B platform to thousands of Emerald customer brands

Emerald Holding, Inc. announced that it has completed the acquisition of PlumRiver LLC (“PlumRiver”), a leading international provider of software-as-a-service technology through its Elastic Suite solution. Elastic Suite’s platform streamlines the wholesale buying process for both brands and retail buyers, creating a digital year-round transactional platform for use by Emerald’s customers.

The acquisition will accelerate Emerald’s strategy to provide 365-day-per-year engagement for its customer base regardless of location by significantly expanding its digital commerce capabilities and providing its customers with robust transactional functionality, including deep enterprise-level integration to brands’ ERP systems, allowing customers to manage orders, real-time inventory, and product merchandising. PlumRiver, which was founded in 2002, is integrated with preeminent manufacturers and retailers across numerous industries, most notably in the outdoor, surf, cycling, footwear and sporting goods verticals, and will complement Emerald’s portfolio of leading show brands including Outdoor Retailer and Surf Expo, among others.

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PlumRiver’s Elastic B2B platform bridges the gap between sellers’ order processing systems and allows brands to sell directly to their buyers using print-free digital product catalogs and merchandising technology. This enables clients to increase their efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability and profitability. Key client brands include: Patagonia, The North Face, Burton, Shimano, Scott Sports, Rip Curl, Boardriders, Volcom, Timberland, New Balance, Vans, Orvis and Puma.

Brian Field, Emerald’s Chief Operating Officer, said, “Over the course of 2020, we launched many digital product offerings focused on customer engagement, new customer acquisition, and delivering high-value customer solutions. From our customers’ feedback, the highest-value of these needs is clearly centered on the transaction between buyer and seller. Through our acquisition of PlumRiver and the Elastic platform, we now have the capability to offer a full spectrum of bundled solutions to our customers—from product discovery, lead-generation, to transaction—across both in-person, face-to-face events as well as year-round, digital opportunities.”

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Hervé Sedky, Emerald’s President and Chief Executive Officer, added, “The acquisition of PlumRiver is a natural extension of our live events business; we can now offer a complementary, year-round interaction and transaction platform. PlumRiver’s technology is already used by world-class clients and will foster increased engagement between Emerald and our customers. Importantly, the Elastic B2B eCommerce SaaS solution is expected to strengthen our existing live events, expanding both their relevance and growth profile, while also bringing an additive subscription-based revenue stream to Emerald.”

Josh Reddin, Chief Executive Officer of PlumRiver, stated, “Elastic has clearly emerged as the preferred wholesale purchasing and digital merchandising solution among both brands and retailers. Looking forward, I couldn’t be more encouraged by the opportunity to establish Elastic as the standard B2B ecommerce solution across even more verticals as we expand our business through our combination with Emerald. Their portfolio of industry-leading events provides significant growth opportunities for our solutions.” Added John Marchione, Co-Founder of PlumRiver, “We are thrilled to join Emerald to bring our innovative, market-driven solutions and efficiencies to thousands of brands and retailers across the globe in a rapidly expanding B2B digital economy. We are equally excited for the many new opportunities for our team members.”

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