Focusing on DNVBs, Adventures makes acquisition to accelerate e-commerce

In yet another move to bring the advertising market closer to the e-commerce sector, Adventures continued its plan to create a digital solution that incorporates all the steps of the virtual shopping journey of its brands’ consumers. This Thursday, July 21, the company announced the acquisition of the digital performance agency e-Can, specialized in e-commerce.

The deal, revealed exclusively to the NeoFeed, was being sewn for the past three months. The transaction that gives 100% control of the agency to Adventures, which will absorb the company into its operation, involved cash payment and distribution of shares, but only to the e-Can partners who will remain in the business.

“It’s an acquisition in which we bring in big brands to do all the work on performance, SEO, optimization and CRM practices”, says Felipe Dellacqua, partner and vice president of the e-commerce division at Adventures. He arrived at the company in March, invited by the founding partners Rapha Avellar, Ricardo Dias and Gerard Roure. Another partner is Edwin Junior, who serves as president of Adventures.

Founded in 2013 by Daniela Aquino as a digital marketing agency, the company has gained ground in the industry and has more than 70 clients. Most in the fashion sector, with companies such as Tommy Hilfiger, Dress to, Gringa, among others. In other areas, it also operates with companies such as Yorgus (natural yogurt), Drogasmil (pharmacy) and Rede Manaus (automotive accessories).

In recent years, the company has incorporated more partners into its business. Among them was Sergio Eraldo Salles, CEO of Legend Capital and who was also the founder of Bozano Investimentos (now Crescera Capital) alongside Paulo Guedes, current minister of the economy. Salles and Flávia Galvão, from Ipanema Ventures, leave the business after the M&A.

“e-Can brings to Adventures a structure that involves development and performance, store implementation, CRM”, says Daniela, who remains in the business. With this, Adventures expands the range of services to step more strongly in the e-commerce market, mainly with its DNVBs (digitally native vertical brands).

Adventures still intends to carry out another M&A operation in the coming months, with the purchase of a company that operates with full commerce, but the name is still kept confidential.

The money for the acquisitions comes from the investment of R$ 50 million that Adventures announced in February this year and that valued the company at R$ 450 million. The Series A investment was led by Provence Capital and had the participation of Mercado Livre, two Twitter executives (Matthew Derella and Adam Bain), in addition to investors who had already contributed to the business, such as Atmos, Navi and Arbor Capital.

Adventures revealed that, in December last year, it had annual recurring revenue of R$90 million and Ebitda of R$10 million, with almost all revenue coming from services provided to large customers, such as Tiktok, Americanas, Tinder, Disney. , Stone, among others. This year’s revenue is expected to be scaled by digital brands.

The plan for this involves creating a complete e-commerce platform that can compete, for example, with companies like Infracommerce – which, in turn, has curbed acquisitions. The arrival of e-Can and other companies help to expand Adventures’ range of services from customer acquisition through digital media to conversion rate optimization, storage, logistics, CRM and SAC.

The approximation of the advertising market with e-commerce has been happening more frequently in recent months. A recent example was the purchase of the Brazilian company Corebiz, which operates as a consultancy specializing in e-commerce, by the British group WPP, a reference in the advertising market. The deal was announced this week.

complete strategy

Digital marketing and brand management company, Adventures was born in 2020. In December last year, it decided to enter the DNVBs market with the launch of a first brand in partnership with child actress Sienna Belle.

For this year, the company already has six contracts signed with celebrities. One of them is with country singer Gusttavo Lima, who has almost 44 million followers on Instagram. In the second semester, the artist will have a perfume launched in partnership with Adventures. Other contracts, including with another large celebrity, were also signed by the company.

While strengthening its team, Adventures structures its operation to be able to increase sales of products, whose revenue is shared between the celebrity and the company, with the latter bearing all the costs involved in the business. To assist in this process, the company entered into partnerships with e-commerce players such as Mercado Livre, Shopify and VTEX.

After bringing in a big celebrity and reinforcing the background of its business, the company also intends to get closer to the information technology area. “We want to use data to create efficiency and scale for private and third-party brands,” says Dellacqua.

In this sense, the company developed and launched two software on the market. One of them is called Smartcommerce, which monitors various sources of data in real time so that the entrepreneur can make the best decisions in terms of logistics, marketing, inventory replenishment and other aspects of the business.

The other program is called Brandlovers, which is used to manage micro-influencers, ambassadors and communities of digital native brands. “It’s a software that helps transform fans into affiliates that help the brand grow, promoting and getting paid for sales”, says Dellacqua.

Source: Neofeed