MIAMI, FL – (May 11, 2015) Trivest Partners (“Trivest”) today announced that its affiliate, American Covers Inc. (d/b/a: “HandStands” or the “Company”), has acquired the IP rights and substantially all of the assets of the Lexol brand from Summit Industries. Lexol has been a leader in leather care for over 80 years and boasts more than 30 products for home and auto use.
The Lexol brand includes a full line of products designed to help clean, maintain, and restore leather-based goods. Bringing Lexol’s products under the HandStands umbrella will further diversify the Company’s product offering and deepen its penetration within the automotive aftercare market. HandStands will take over the daily operations of managing the Lexol brand, including marketing, sales, and distribution. Financial terms of the private transaction were not disclosed.
Chris Anderson, HandStands’ CEO, said, “Lexol’s products are a great addition to HandStands’ existing product portfolio. The Lexol brand is poised to be a growth vehicle for our company, and we intend to invest heavily through our proven formula of industry-leading consumer research combined with innovative product development.”
Russ Wilson, Trivest Partner, added, “Lexol is a long-standing and well respected brand in the leather cleaning and conditioning space. Acquiring the Lexol product line is consistent with HandStands’ strategy to increase the number of high quality auto appearance solutions available to the Company’s retail partners.”
The Lexol purchase represents HandStands first acquisition, and the company intends to continue its aggressive growth trajectory through additional add-on acquisitions, along with continued organic growth.
About HandStands:
Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Salt Lake, City, HandStands designs and markets automotive air freshener products through the Refresh Your Car!®, DRIVEN® and Bahama & Co.® brand names, among others. HandStands sells products across a diverse group of several hundred domestic and international customers. The Company’s primary channels of distribution include the mass market, automotive aftermarket, value and food/drug channels, as well as key distributor partners.
About Trivest:
Trivest Partners is a private investment firm that focuses on partnering with founder/family owned businesses in the United States and Canada. Since its founding in 1981, Trivest has completed more than 200 transactions, totaling in excess of $5.0 billion in value. For additional information, please visit www.trivest.com.
