The private equity firm Hellman & Friedman (H&F) will soon be entering into a binding and exclusive agreement to purchase the NPD Group, once the latter’s employee-works council has been lawfully notified and consulted.
Founded in 1966 and headquartered in Port Washington, New York, NPD claims to be the world’s eighth-largest market research firm. It provides some 2,000 clients in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific with coverage of 19 industries – among them apparel, B2B technology, consumer technology, e-commerce, footwear, media entertainment, mobile, retail, sports, toys and video games.
The takeover deal, whose terms remain undisclosed, should close by the end of this year. NPD’s executive chairman, Tod Johnson, and CEO, Karyn Schoenbart, are to retain a minority stake as well as their seats on the board.
In Europe, it has been conducting on the sports apparel and footwear market in the five major countries since 2000, supplying data from points of sale and consumer surveys. It started the program in combination with GfK, but then continued it single-handedly.
In the U.S., NPD entered the sporting goods segment with the acquisition of SMART (Sports Marketing and Retail Technology) from its founder, the late Jim Spring. Later, in 2013, it scooped up a second market research firm founded by Spring, Leisure Trends Group, which focuses on the bike industry and operates out of Boulder, Colorado. In 2019, to bolster its position in the U.S., NPD proceeded to acquire assets relating to the point-of-sale sports and outdoor tracking business of SportsOneSource, which had itself moved to the city of Boulder four years earlier.
Founded in 1984, H&F had about $90 billion in assets under management in July.
