Crowd Media Holdings signs 'VITAL' European sales agreement

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Global media and marketing company Crowd Media Holdings Limited (ASX:CM8 | FWB:CM3) has joined forces with London-based VITAL Innovations Ltd.

Crowd Media and VITAL have entered into a two-year exclusive and binding marketing services agreement to market and sell key VITAL portfolio brands and products into the European market (excluding UK).

Crowd Media will receive 100 per cent of net sales, by using its deep experience in digital marketing, including influencer and performance marketing strategies to millennials across Europe.

Crowd Media will use its expertise to drive web and mobile sales of VITAL products throughout Europe, thereby enabling VITAL to roll out its award-winning brands into the EU markets.

This EU-based social media, influencer marketing and social commerce partnership, will include the promotion and sale on a Direct to Consumer (D2C) model of some of VITAL's brands into the European market, as well as development and execution of an all-encompassing digital marketing campaign across Europe.

This includes brands that can assist in the fight against COVID-19.

The 40-year-old family-owned VITAL has created and launched a number of successful brands across a various sectors including healthcare, consumer and water purification.

Its brand portfolio includes Vital Baby and Vital Family, with products such as the Aquaint sanitising water pack. Aquaint is a bacteria-killing cleanser that can be sprayed on any surface.

UK-based SuperSafe, is another cleaning and sanitation brand under the VITAL umbrella and has been actively developing products used for testing and protection against COVID-19.

SuperSafe products are widely used within schools, police forces and most importantly during this time, the National Health Service Hospitals (NHS), where COVID-19 frontline workers are battling the spread of the virus.

The NHS is highly discerning when it comes to what products it uses, so this is a major coup for Crowd Media to be involved with VITAL.

Crowd's CEO Domenic Carosa says the company is pleased to have executed an exclusive agreement with VITAL.

"They are a powerful, family-owned company and have been in business more than 40 years," he says.

"Their portfolio brands are of special interest to Crowd because their target customer is almost always a millennial, perfectly matched to our social media and influencer marketing skills.

"We have already identified a number of VITAL key products and market segments in the healthcare and consumer space where we will focus our initial efforts. Crowd can really add value here, leveraging our five years of social media, social influencer and social commerce experience for the benefit of both parties."

New agreement the sign of things to come under new executive

The VITAL agreement comes hot on the heels of Crowd Media officially launching the KINN Living EU-based website, selling KINN's eco-friendly products, including hand sanitiser, a vital product in the COVID-19 fight, into the European market.

As with the VITAL agreement, this agreement leverages Crowd's core strengths including digital social media/influencer marketing across a database of more than 10,000 influencers.

Crowd will act as exclusive digital distributor for KINN's award-winning home-cleaning and laundry-care products in all EU markets.

These latest agreements have been completed after a strategic review was undertaken last year to streamline the company's operations and redirect its focus.

Leading this change has been an experienced new board with a great deal of pedigree.

New CM8 chairman Steven Schapera has laid down the new strategic vision and is delivering on it.

Schapera co-founded BECCA Cosmetics, which exited for AU$300M to cosmetics powerhouse Este Lauder.

The other members of the consortium include Robert Quant, former COO/CFO of Invincible Brands Europe's fastest growing influencer marketing company. The Invincible Brands marketing platform reaches over 100 million people on social media every month.

Working the Invincible co-founders, Quant helped grow Invincible into a highly profitable business, surging from seven million euros (AU$11.5 million) revenue in 2016, to around 100 million euros (AU$164 million) in 2019.

Quant is now on the board of CM8, applying his skills, expertise and relationships to growing the CM8 business.

Schapera and Quant, alone with the co-founders of Invincible Brands, Bjoern Keune and Gennadi Tschernow, are part of the Invincible Investment Consortium (IIC), which has already invested AU$3.7 million into Crowd Media.

This consortium is undertook an in-depth review of the Crowd Media platform. They identified significant opportunities to leverage Crowd Media's proprietary technology and knowhow into new geographies, channels and revenue streams.

The review is now paying off, as CM8 has achieved a positive operational position for the year to date with $13.6 million in revenue and a small profit of $0.1m in underlying EBITDA.

This compares favourably to the matching YTD 2019 loss of ($2.0m) in underlying EBITDA previously reported.

Business News Australia