Solo Group, a supplier of promotional clothing, workwear and corporatewear, has acquired Mid Ocean Group, a long-established specialist in promotional products.
The takeover is the culmination of a two-year partnership between the two companies aimed at providing the promotional market and resellers with a “one-stop shop” experience.
It unites Mid Ocean, which for more than 50 years has specialised in supplying “hard” goods, with Solo which was founded in 1991 to bring fashion and ethical ways of working to the promotional textiles market.
Alain Milgrom, president-founder of Solo Group, said: “During the past 10 years, Midocean has impressively taken a leading position as multi-category and full-service supplier of hard goods in Europe.
“The still-fragmented promotional market today is more and more demanding service and efficiencies across the value chain.
“Our objective has always been to deliver the best service to our customers, always acting in ‘Fair Spirit’. This includes offering a full-service solution to stimulate the appeal for promotional textiles with end-users.
“When combining the strengths of both companies, this is exactly what I envision to happen, in the best interests of all our customers. We do believe that the combination of our companies will enable and boost Solo Group’s brand awareness and desirability, creating benefit to our entire network of customers.”
Solo Group has built up a range of five customisable clothing brands: Sol’s, RTP Apparel, Atelier Textile Français, Neoblu and Joy Thaï, designed for use in promotional, workwear and corporate branding.
In 2020, Solo Group formed a “commercial cooperation” with Mid Ocean – which trades as Midocean – to explore the compatibility of both companies in offering Solo’s textile products to resellers across Europe.
This cooperation was judged to be successful, benefiting Solo Group’s entire distribution network and proving to be a perfect fit in terms of geography, operational set-up and company values.
Solo Group CEO Audélia Krief said: “Midocean is a fantastic opportunity for our group to diversify, adding a completely new product category and service, which is printed hard goods.
“By investing severely in process and system automation and digitalisation, Midocean has indeed proven to be the benchmark in terms of portfolio accessibility, print quality consistency and delivery lead times.
“When combining both companies, customers will have direct access to extensive inventories of promotional textiles that will be decorated and drop-shipped to end-users as efficiently and quickly as resellers have become used to for hard goods.
“Furthermore, with textile, we are addressing very diverse markets such as workwear, souvenir, merchandising, print on demand, retail/e-tail, etc. We will therefore continue to nurture our current distribution network with the best products.”
Stephen Gibson, CEO of Mid Ocean, added: “It is for the previously mentioned reasons that Midocean has always envisioned a collaboration with an established textile specialist of promotional textiles.
“This will instantly strengthen the company’s presentation as a multi-category-specialist supplier, resulting in the most comprehensive item portfolio in the industry, instantly available including print/decoration.
“Solo Group is one of the leading specialists of customisable textiles in Europe and I am delighted to have found in Solo Group the partner to pursue this vision.”
