Trilantic North America has acquired a majority stake in Gorilla Commerce, an e-commerce platform specialising in the development and sale of home and pet products through direct-to-consumer channels.
Trilantic North America has acquired a majority stake in Gorilla Commerce, an e-commerce platform specialising in the development and sale of home and pet products through direct-to-consumer channels.
Trilantic North America focuses on control and significant minority investments in North America. The firm’s primary investment focus is in the business services, consumer, and energy sectors.
Trilantic North America currently manages six private equity fund families with aggregate capital commitments of USD9.6 billion. It closed Fund VI North America, a USD2.75 billion private equity fund investing in the business services, consumer and energy sectors, at its hard cap in July last year. Fund VI North America exceeded its initial target of USD2.25 billion, and surpassed the size of its USD2.2 billion predecessor fund.
Founded in 2014 in Westport, Connecticut, Gorilla Commerce operates as a direct-to-consumer home and pet product development platform, utilising a data-driven approach to product category selection through a systematic assessment of underlying market characteristics.
The company manages over three thousand SKUs across more than 30 product categories through a portfolio of brands that includes Gorilla Grip, Kangaroo, Sofa Shield, Grip Master, Ninja, GripMAX, Mighty Monkey and the Connecticut Home Company.
Gorilla Commerce co-founders and co-chief executive officers Jennifer Bernstein and Marissa Saporta continue to own equity in the business and will continue to lead the company through its next phase of growth.
“Jen and Marissa have developed an incredibly powerful system that harnesses data to capitalise on both the growth of the home goods product market and channel shift dynamics resulting from e-commerce penetration,” said Jamie Manges, partner at Trilantic North America.
“At Trilantic North America, we remain dedicated to partnering with exceptional founder-owned businesses and are increasingly focused on investing in next generation companies that are leveraging technology to disrupt traditional consumer categories.
“Our partnership will fuel the continued growth of our existing product portfolio, accelerate the introduction of new products and enable our entry into new sales channels and geographic markets,” said Marissa Saporta, co-founder of Gorilla Commerce.
Lincoln International acted as financial advisor to Gorilla Commerce on the deal. Kirkland & Ellis LLP provided legal advice to Trilantic North America.
