More of us are jumping on the Social Media bandwagon and sharing aspects of our personal lives online through Facebook, Twitter etc. Though it seems that there is still a market out there to convert and share our favourite images, photos and messages in paper format. The self-service market of tools to enable us do that is relatively small but growing fast. Hence it came as a no surprise when digital photo service Photobox has announced that it is merging with the personalised greetings card company Moonpig.com. Photobox will pay £120m for Moonpig, some of which will be paid for with shares in the new company and some of which will come from bank loans and new funding from private equity investors.
The deal will see Moonpig's chairman, Nick Jenkins, cash in part of his 35 per cent stake in the company he set up in 2000. He will continue as an adviser to the merged entity. As FT reports, the companies have about 6m customers between them and both are experiencing rapid growth. Moonpig’s sales rose by 21 per cent to £38m in the year to April 2011, while PhotoBox’s sales rose about 30 per cent last year. PhotoBox’s most popular product is a book of photos which customers can design themselves.
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