Sentinel Capital Partners, a private equity firm that invests in promising companies at the lower end of the midmarket, has acquired GSM Outdoors, a provider branded accessories for the hunting, sport shooting, and outdoor enthusiast markets.
Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
Headquartered in Grand Prairie, Texas, GSM has a broad portfolio of innovative hunting and sport shooting products sold under highly recognised brand names. GSM’s industry leading brands include Stealth Cam (technologically advanced game scouting cameras); Walker’s (hearing protection and enhancement devices); Cyclops (specialty outdoor lighting); Western Rivers (game calls); American Hunter (game feeders); HME (hunting knives and tools); and SME (targets and related accessories). GSM sells through a diverse mix of channels, including online retailers, sporting goods stores, mass merchants, outdoorsman retailers, farm and fleet stores, and distributors across the US and Canada.
“GSM has an extremely passionate, talented, and committed management team that has built a strong platform of coveted brands,” says John Van Sickle, a partner at Sentinel. “GSM is an industry leader and innovator and is driving growth through developing innovative, high quality products. GSM is positioned as a vendor-of-choice with leading retailers and has a highly engaged consumer enthusiast following. Importantly, GSM’s management has created a culture of success and has positioned GSM as a consolidator of choice in the large and highly-fragmented hunting and sport shooting accessories market.”
“We are very pleased to partner with Sentinel as we execute the next phase of our growth,” says GSM CEO Eddie Castro. “We have an incredibly committed and competitive culture and are passionate about our brands and the customers we serve. Our enthusiast end-user base is loyal and growing. We plan to leverage Sentinel’s extensive experience investing in specialty consumer businesses and making add-on acquisitions to continue our strong growth trajectory.”
The past 12 months have been highly productive for Sentinel. Besides acquiring GSM Outdoors, Sentinel made four other platform investments: Captain D’s, a leading restaurant operator in the QSR seafood sector; MB2 Dental Solutions, a rapidly-growing dental service organisation with a unique physician-centric ownership model; Nekoosa, a leading manufacturer of specialty paper and film products used in the graphics and commercial print markets; and UBEO, a leading provider of document processing services in Texas. During this same period, Sentinel also completed exits from Huddle House, a franchisor of family dining restaurants in the Southeast; National Spine & Pain Centers, a leading service provider to interventional pain management physicians; PlayCore, the leading North American supplier of play, park, and recreation products; RotoMetrics, the leading global provider of precision rotary cutting tools; and WellSpring Consumer Healthcare, a North American marketer of OTC health brands.
