From North Equity
North Equity, a leading digital media venture equity firm, today announced that it has acquired a number of media brands from Bonnier Corporation. The acquisition includes Popular Science, Popular Photography, Saveur, Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Better You and Interesting Things.
The additions complement North Equity’s robust home platform, where Saveur will join BobVila.com and Kitchenistic to form a new food category. They will also create a new specialty media vertical under Popular Science and Popular Photography, and expand North’s growing footprint in the military, tactical and outdoor verticals, where it recently added Task & Purpose, one of the leading digital media properties for active-duty military and veterans.
“Since inception, the North team has proved our ability to acquire, reimagine and profitably grow media brands,” said Andrew Perlman, North Equity Managing Partner. “We have accomplished this by working with the teams at each brand to deliver high-quality, meaningful content and build innovative, sustainable business models. We’re excited to have the opportunity to add such venerable brands to our portfolio and look forward to working with the amazing people behind them.”
The brands being acquired include three 100-plus-year-old publications—Popular Science, Outdoor Life and Field & Stream—and represent some of the most trusted voices in science, outdoor and food. Collectively, they engage nearly 10 million monthly online unique visitors, another 15 million followers on social media, and have 1.7 million loyal print subscribers.
“Bonnier has been the proud owner of Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Popular Science and Saveur for more than a decade. These brands exhibit a tremendous amount of authority in their genres and have earned the trust of their readers, and we’re excited that North Equity recognizes the value these brands have in the marketplace,” said David Ritchie, chief executive officer, Bonnier Corp. “We believe North Equity is best-positioned to continue to invest in andgrow these iconic legacy brands.”
North Equity is committed to developing high-quality, trusted content, while empowering media brands and content creators to scale audience and engagement. North will be applying its proprietary operating model and technology platform—which have resulted in profitable, triple- digit year-over-year traffic and revenue growth in its home and auto platforms, which includes BobVila.com and The Drive—to grow the legacy of the acquired brands and position them to thrive into the future.
Baker McKenzie and Bailey Duquette advised North on this transaction.