Portfolio Companies
CJ Apparel Group - a New York based company, which is a leader in the design, manufacture, marketing and distribution of women’s, men’s, junior, and kids’ apparel under the Caribbean Joe¨, Havana Jack’s Caf¨, Jamaica Bay¨, Periscope¨, and Cupid’s Cup¨ trademarks and other private labels. CJ Apparel Group also owns and manages strategic brand and licensing agreements in both apparel and non-apparel categories.
CJ was purchased in December 2006 by a group of investors that included Knight’s Bridge. Prior to acquisition CJ had sales of $150 million, and negative EBITDA of $8 million. The business was acquired for $10 million in cash and the assumption of approximately $43 million in debt. A new turnaround plan was created, closing three of the four office premises, reducing payroll and staff expense by almost 40%, reducing debt by $30 million and installing a seasoned and dedicated management team, (including a new CEO, COO, Merchant and Design Team). In addition, all supplier credit terms were renegotiated with open term operating lines, and today, 10 months after acquisition, the company has $7.1 million of EBITDA (first nine months of 2007) only $16 million in debt and is on track to meet and exceed first year EBITDA targets of $6 million.
CJ was amalgamated with Ellen Tracy in April, 2008, see details below:
Amalgamation of Ellen Tracy/Caribbean Joe - In April, 2008 Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners Fund I LP joined an investment group in the formation of Fashionology Group LLC (“Fashionology”) to acquire the Ellen Tracy® brand and all associated assets from Liz Claiborne, Inc.
Simultaneous with the Ellen Tracy acquisition, Fashionology Group acquired CJ Apparel Group and several brands including Caribbean Joe®. Ellen Tracy and Caribbean Joe will operate as independent entities under the Fashionology Group’s newly formed master holding company ETPH LLC.
Combined revenues of ETPH LLC are expected to exceed $200 million.
Headquartered in New York, Caribbean Joe is a designer, manufacturer and importer of casual apparel, in the women’s, men’s and children’s markets that is sold under a number of brand names, including Caribbean Joe, Havana Jack Café, Jamaica Bay, Born Barefoot, Periscope Kids, and Periscope Juniors.
Ellen Tracy is a premier fashion Bridge brand previously owned by Liz Claiborne, and is one of the largest brands in the upper-scale wholesale segment of the women’s apparel industry and typically retails at upscale department stores such as Saks, Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom’s and Neiman Marcus in the range of US$400-US$1,200 per garment.
Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners Fund I LP has purchased 5,000 units of ETPH LLC at a purchase price of US $5,000,000. In connection with making this investment ETPH LLC has appointed Ken Finkelstein, CEO of Knight’s Bridge to it’s Board of Directors.
HALSTON Luxury Women’s Apparel - The vision and strategic plan is to create, promote and deliver a premium luxury brand, globally, for Women’s dresses, shoes and premium accessories. The brand was acquired for $23.3 million in March 2007 by a group of investors that included Knight’s Bridge. Halston has now hired the former Chief Commercial Officer of Jimmy Choo shoes (Bonnie Takahara) and has an advisory board that includes Tamara Mellon and Rachel Zoe. It is currently anticipated that as a premier manufacturer, retailer and licensor of luxury Women’s products, Halston will have its owns showcase stores in New York and London. The management team is now in place, including a top designer and the company has already received a tremendous amount of publicity and requests for product from key strategic retailers.
RepeatSeat Ltd. - Knight’s Bridge led and invested as part of a syndicated $3,500,000 convertible debenture financing which was completed on June 29, 2007. Roynat Capital Inc. provided an additional $3,500,000 of convertible debenture financing to RepeatSeat on identical terms and conditions to those of the investor syndicate. The financing enabled RepeatSeat, a North American leader of mobile commerce and internet based ticketing solutions for the entertainment and sports industries, to acquire 100% of the equity of Janda Products Limited, carrying on business as New Way Sales, a national supplier of arcade and redemption game services primarily to theatre and entertainment businesses.
LIMOS.COM - On September 21, 2007, an investor syndicate led by Knight’s Bridge completed its acquisition of the assets and operations of LIMOS.com, a private company with an established reputation as the leading service provider of Internet initiated sales leads for licensed limousine operators. Management believes that this mature optimization platform has the power to generate over the Internet, customized and qualified sales leads for any business to consumer or business to business service or product. Established in 1997, LIMOS.com was acquired for a total consideration of $ 4.3 million, which was funded by $ 2.3 million from strategic investors and $ 2 million from a third party lender arranged by Knight’s Bridge. An additional $ 0.2 million was contributed by the syndicate for new working capital purposes. It is anticipated that the Company’s 2007 Revenues and EBITDA will exceed $2.7million and $1.5million, respectively.
Buddy Media, Inc. - Buddy Media In September, 2007 a group of investors that included, Knight’s Bridge invested in the Series A Round of Buddy Media, headquartered in New York. The company is a specialist in creating and delivering relevant user applications for internet-based social and community aggregation platforms, including Facebook and MySpace, as those providers quickly emerge as a part of a new global media. Buddy Media has just launched seven new user applications for Facebook alone, which created 300,000 new incremental Facebook users in the first days of release. Additional investors in the round include Peter Thiel (PayPal founder, Clarium Capital and Facebook angel investor), Mark Pinkus (Facebook angel investor) and James Altucher (of TheStreet.com). The invested funds will be focused on the fastest growing Facebook application in the portfolio AceBucks. The company will expand the AceBucks application and make it the primary virtual currency for Facebook members.
In April, 2008, Knight’s Bridge participated in a successful “B” Round that was led by Softbank Capital Partners, Boston.
MyTrade.com, Inc. - MyTrade In August, 2007, Knight’s Bridge joined a group of investors in an equity financing for My Trade.com. The company is a customized interface for stock market investors and traders that aggregates their investment data and provides insight and logic from profiled members who are interested in or are closely following a particular public company’s stock. MyTrade was aquired by Investools (NASD: SWIM) in December 2007.
Green Screen Interactive Software, LLC, (“Green Screen”) – Green Screen is a New York City-based developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment software for use on all major platforms including Nintendo’s Wii and DS, Sony’s PSP and PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and personal computers (PCs). The company was founded by industry veterans Ryan Brant, Mark Seremet and Susan Cummings. Mr. Brant and Mr. Seremet are the founders of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (“Take-Two”) (Nasdaq: TTWO), the creator and developer of one of the most prominent and successful AAA games, “Grand Theft Auto”. During this management’s group tenure, Take Two established itself as one of the leading developers, publishers and distributors in the video game industry with sales consistently in excess of US$1 billion per year.
Green Screen commenced operations in March 2007 and in June successfully completed a US$5 million initial private placement, and then initiated a strategy of partnering with or acquiring companies with compelling intellectual property, distribution capabilities, and/or management with demonstrated records of success.
The Company acquired the assets of Supervillain Studios, Inc. (“Supervillain”), a video game developer of AAA console games based in Santa Ana, California.
In December 2007, Green Screen acquired all of the outstanding capital stock of Destination Software, Inc., a profitable video game publisher and distributor specializing in the publishing of “casual games”, primarily for the various Nintendo platforms, including such high profile games as “Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf”, “Monopoly” and “Deal or No Deal”. Destination’s titles are currently available at major retailers throughout North America. It then acquired a European distributor, based in the UK as part of its continuing roll-out strategy and expansion. It will now begin formulating plans to create and launch major titles in the AAA game category.
In March, 2008, Knight’s Bridge participated in Green Screen’s second private placement round and invested over $2.6 MM.In connection with making this investment Green Screen has offered a position on its board of directors to Ken Finkelstein, CEO of Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners Inc.
TubeMOGUL - Co-Founded by Brett Wilson and John Hughes, and headquartered in Silicon Valley, TubeMOGUL has developed its proprietary ‘load and track’ distribution and analytics technology that is presently being used by media publishers, media companies, ad agencies, record labels, and film studios (including CBS Interactive, BBC and NextNewNetworks) to distribute and analyze video across the Internet.
TubeMOGUL’s technology allows a video producer to publish and distribute videos across all major web-based video sharing sites, including You Tube, Revvr, Yahoo, AOL, and Viddler, simply by doing only one universal upload to TubeMOGUL. As each video is distributed out to the web, TubeMOGUL tags the video with its proprietary analytic software that aggregates video-viewing data from each of the multiple video sharing sites and gives producers and publishers improved audit level data of when, where, and how often their videos are being watched. This rich data dashboard gives video publishers real time statistics for viewership, popularity, trends, and demographics, which is highly important to advertisers who want to target their message, and immediately know their return on investment from their advertising and promotional expenditures. From product launch in July 2007, TubeMogul’s solution has now been adopted by over 20,000 video producers, and over 100,000 videos are deployed through TubeMOGUL each day.
In February, 2008, Knight’s Bridge led TubeMOGUL’s first institutional investment round of US$1.5 million and its Knight’s Bridge Fund I Limited Partnership participated in that investment.
Howard Lindzon, a principal of Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners Inc., has been appointed as a director of TubeMOGUL to represent the Fund.
