As reported by the Evening Standard on August 16th, Inc & Co, the private equity group headed by Jack Mason, Group CEO, founded just six months before the global pandemic in July 2019, moves closer to its projected 2023 £130 million turnover mark with the acquisition of global British brand Maker&Son, adding to turnover by a further £30 million.
Maker&Son is the group’s first business with global reach, with the brand having established operations in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the USA and Ireland.
Compounding its status as one of the fastest growing business investment groups, Inc & Co, which was founded by three friends all in their early thirties, and now employs over 450 people across all the group’s brands, has acquired and sold multiple businesses since opening doors and now has a portfolio of 16 brands spanning retail, property, tech, food and beverage and logistics.
Maker&Son, which was acquired in August 2022, joins the recently acquired luxury leather goods company KNOMO London and Chop’d, a food and beverage salad brand. As well as the multi-million-pound purchase of South-East travel brand Baldwins Travel, a move that kept the 126-year-old travel agency, its eight branches and protected the jobs of more than 50 employees, during the pandemic. Baldwins Travel was founded in 1895 and the purchase by Inc & Co has seen them navigate the post covid travel crisis and a return to profitability.
The group, whose primary acquisition was notably the purchase of Fast Web Media, originally a Microsoft business, in 2020, made its first major strategic sale in 2021, selling data privacy and information security firm, MyLife Digital to prominent industry leader, German-based DataGuard.
Inc & Co, whose business model is founded on both acquiring and starting new businesses, launched King Street Grooming and Poke + Bowl in 2022. In London, Leeds and Manchester it also owns flexible office and workspace brand, incspaces.
Commenting on the businesses, Jack Mason, Group CEO of Inc & Co said: “We pride ourselves on expediting acquisitions in an extremely human-centric and diligent way. Inc & Co focuses on businesses that speak to digitally native consumers, we were founded in the digital sphere and focus on improving efficiencies in this area first. We are a people-first investment group, progressive by nature. We are ambitious and though we both launched at a turbulent time and continue to weather uncertainty – the pandemic economic hangover – we are still ambitious and believe that through applying a digitally minded and strategic approach to business you can succeed. Into next year we are excited to work with the Maker&Son team to strengthen the brand and to expand it further regionally and internationally. We are also looking to grow our property and office division, incspaces. Outside of that, we’re always open to opportunities.”
Its latest acquisition, Maker&Son, is a British furniture brand founded by father & son, Alex Willcock & Felix Conran in 2018. The fast-growing brand, which is part of a design dynasty, having been founded by the third generation of the Conran family, is globally synonymous with creating the viral ‘sofa jump’ and for making some of the world’s most sustainable luxury sofas and beds for a digitally native adoptive audience. It employs 150 people across the brand worldwide.
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