While the pandemic has iced a lot of business deals over the past six months, it created the perfect opportunity for New York-based private equity group Brand Velocity Partners to acquire Baton Rouge e-commerce platform BBQGuys and its sister company, Blaze Outdoor Products, in late August.
BVP, just a little over a year old, invests in consumer and information service businesses.
BBQGuys is the nation’s largest e-retailer of high-end barbeque grills, grilling accessories and outdoor kitchen products at a time when COVID-19 has prompted Americans to spend more time cooking at home and enjoying their outdoor spaces.
“I saw an extraordinary opportunity to create a lifestyle entertainment play around something people are really enthusiastic and passionate about, which is grilling,” says Drew Sheinman, a founding partner of BVP, whose brand marketing and business development experience includes WWM-IMG, Coca-Cola and Madison Square Garden. “The backyard is the new living room, the new vacation spot, so we started exploring an opportunity to attack that [market] with a company that has been wildly successful.”
BBQGuys has grown considerably since it was founded in 1998 as The Grill Store and More, a bricks-and-mortar store that shifted to an all-online model in the early days of the internet. Its annual growth rate has averaged 27% for the past 15 years. So far this year, revenues are up more than 80% from $130 million in 2019, and the market for outdoor cooking products is projected to grow from $9.7 billion in 2019 to more than $11.7 billion by 2024.
Sheinman and his partners in BVP—investment expert Steve Lebowitz, private equity veteran Austin Ramos and marketing executive Larry Rothstein—say they will grow their new company through sales and acquisitions.
They also plan to create a new brand narrative around BBQGuys and Blaze—companies that are financially successful but are not household names.
“People didn’t know who Peloton was three years ago,” Sheinman says. “We have an amazing foundation. We’re just getting started and I think Baton Rouge is a really big part of the story. Baton Rouge has its own branding potential because of the culture of outdoor living, entertaining, social connectivity.”
Sheinman declines to say what BVP paid for the company, the third in a rapidly expanding portfolio of e-retailers that also includes Original Footwear and Magma Products.
Atlanta-based e-retail executive Russ Wheeler, who most recently was president of build.com, is relocating to Baton Rouge to serve as BBQGuys’ new CEO. Wheeler knows the local market from his years in Baton Rouge as vice president of sales and marketing with Your Other Warehouse, which was acquired by Home Depot in 2005.
BBQGuys’ executive vice president for marketing and e-commerce, Jason Stutes, and most of the company’s other executives as well as its employees are staying in Baton Rouge, which will remain the company’s headquarters. Company founder Mike Hackley and veteran executive Corey Tisdale will continue to serve as advisers and members of the company’s board of directors.
“From a supply chain standpoint, we’re going to look to expand distribution,” Wheeler says. “But the majority of our operations will remain in Baton Rouge.”
BVP raised money for the acquisition from multiple sources, notable among them: Archie, Peyton, Eli and Cooper Manning.
NFL Hall of Famers LaDainian Tomlinson and Steve Hutchinson as well as Hutchinson’s wife, social media influencer Landyn Hutchinson, are also strategic investors.
Other investors involved in the deal are: Aberdeen Capital Management, ACE & Company, BPEA Private Equity, Cardinal Capital, The Cordish Companies, Darco Capital, and Hermes GPE. Whitehorse Capital provided term loan financing for the transaction as agent and sole lender in addition to investing in the equity.
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