Consumer
Our consumer sector investments span over two decades, empowering leading management teams as they navigate a pathway through the fast-changing marketplace. From our first consumer investment in retailer Fat Face, to our most recent in online travel agent loveholidays, our sector expertise has enabled us to ask the right questions and de-risk uncertainty. It means that our investees can be confident in making the most of every opportunity.
The power of data
Data is the most valuable commodity that consumer businesses have. Operating in dynamic trading environments, where technology is changing consumer behaviour and margins are often thin is super challenging. By harnessing the data in your market and your business you can better serve the customer; attract them efficiently, deliver what they are looking for in the right way, at the right time and price, delight them and retain them. Data enables you to win.
We have built our own Insights team that focuses on just this; enabling our management teams to surface, analyse and use the right data to drive growth and build the stand-out business in their market.
How we can help
Whether you’re thinking about how to expand into overseas markets, build a world-class leadership team, or acquire customers more efficiently, we’ve designed our in-house team to equip you with the tools you need. Our growth acceleration team includes experts focused on customer acquisition and retention, talent, pricing and data science.
We expect the pace of transformation in the consumer sector to accelerate as the digital revolution gathers even greater speed. Only those businesses that are prepared to evolve at pace will be able to keep up. Great customer propositions and high-quality management teams will remain as important as ever, but those that can leverage new technologies to best understand their customers will have the edge on growth.
Investments in the online travel space
Livingbridge is Europe’s leading private equity investor in the online travel space with an outstanding track record and an enviable network of the best talent in the market. We have worked with some of the most successful OTA’s in Europe over the last two decades across car rental, beach holidays, theatre, vacation rental, ski holidays and ferry tickets. We are normally the first PE firm that these businesses have worked with, helping their founders and leaders to build their teams, cultures, technology platforms and success stories.
Sykes Cottages was a fantastic example of how our in-house expertise could equip a fantastic business to grow even faster. During our initial investment period, Sykes grew profits five-fold, completed 11 UK acquisitions and acquired its first overseas acquisition, embarking on an international expansion plan.
Sykes Holiday Cottages
The award-winning management team at Sykes Holiday Cottages discuss how the business has transformed its growth potential during our investment.
