Zwift, the global online fitness platform for cyclists and runners, today announced a $450 million minority investment led by leading global investment firm KKR, accompanied by other new investors Permira, Specialized Bicycle Components’ venture capital fund, Zone 5 Ventures and the Amazon Alexa Fund and existing investors including True, Highland Europe, Novator and Causeway Media. The investment will be used to accelerate the development of Zwift’s core software platform and bring Zwift-designed hardware to market, making Zwift a more immersive and seamless experience for users.

Zwift uses the power of gaming technology to bring the outdoor experience indoors, making at home exercise a fun, engaging and social experience by connecting cyclists and runners in immersive 3D computer-generated worlds. Users of the Zwift platform interact, train and compete together by wirelessly pairing a bike trainer or treadmill to the Zwift app, to power their in-game avatars. This fully immersive experience brings the experience of the outside world into the virtual, simulating the gradients of mountain climbs and the draft of other riders. The platform offers its members the opportunity to explore 240 miles of terrain in 10 virtual worlds where they can also follow structured training plans, enjoy group rides or take part in any one of the hundreds of daily mass participation events. The social aspect of the platform helps deliver the experience of competitive and communal training for users who want to ride or run together and maintain social connections from the comfort of their homes, with the user experience continually improving as the community grows.

Since launching in 2015, Zwift has seen over 2.5 million accounts registered across 190 countries, positioning Zwift as a global leader in the at-home connected fitness market. Zwift’s prominence has increased significantly in 2020 as many turned to the platform to provide not just a fitness solution but also a means to help them maintain their social connections by joining Zwift’s vibrant community who work out together online. Zwift has also led the way in a new category of physically-powered esports, hosting a number of professional events including the first Virtual Tour de France in July, an event broadcast to over 130 countries worldwide that saw the world’s best male and female professional cyclists compete. Later this year, Zwift will be the host platform for the inaugural UCI Cycling Esports World Championships.

Stephen Shanley, Director at KKR, said: “Zwift is the preeminent digital brand for the global cycling community with a best-in-class product that sits at the intersection of digital health,

gaming and at-home fitness. We see tremendous potential ahead as Zwift invests further in its digital and physical products to enhance the experience for its global community of enthusiastic users. This investment fits perfectly with our growth equity strategy of backing leading tech entrepreneurs as they scale globally.” Patrick Devine, Principal at KKR, added: “We are delighted to lead this round, supporting Eric and his team with access to KKR’s global platform and resources.”

Andrew Young, a Principal in Permira’s Menlo Park office, said: “Zwift is a perfect fit with Permira’s DNA, not least because we have a big Zwift fanbase in the firm, but also an extensive track record of investing in consumer technology businesses to deliver global growth. We’re excited to partner with Eric and the team as they seek to turbo charge product investment and to solidify Zwift’s position as the leader of at-home fitness.”

Paul Cocker, Co-Founder of True, said: “As existing investors, we are delighted to have significantly increased our support for Zwift in this round, which reflects the strength of the relationship we have built with Eric and the team, as well as the confidence we have developed in the technology and brand over the last two years. This is our first $100m investment and we are excited about the increased opportunity this transaction now gives Zwift to further transform at-home fitness.”

Eric Min, Zwift CEO and Co-Founder, said: “With this investment, Zwift is primed to operate in a broader fitness market and deliver on our ambition to provide gamified fitness through integrated software and hardware, to anyone who wants to have fun while getting fit at home. We will be accelerating our investment in the core business, improving the overall product experience, and bringing forward new features, more content and Zwift designed hardware, all with the support of KKR and our new outside investors who can help drive our growth. To make this happen, we will be increasing headcount within our core product teams, investing in the very best people. We begin by welcoming Ilkka Paananen to Zwift both as an investor and independent board member.”

Ilkka Paananen, Co-Founder & CEO, Supercell, said: “Zwift is uniquely positioned to lead the way and grow a new global fitness community, combining video gaming and sports, two of my great passions. I have been incredibly impressed by Eric’s vision and ambition, and his commitment to building a world-class product for the community. There are many exciting growth opportunities for Zwift and I’m looking forward to being a part of this journey.”

Specialized’s investment represents the beginning of a strategic partnership between the global cycling brand and Zwift. Both brands share the belief that cycling, whether indoor or outdoor, has the power to improve lives. Chris Yu, Leader of Product and Innovation at

Specialized, stated “our goal is to pedal the planet forward by getting more riders riding, and we are beyond excited at the opportunity to partner with Zwift to break down the barriers to riding indoors on the world’s most engaging platform.”

KKR’s investment was made through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II, a global fund dedicated to growth equity investments in the technology space. KKR has established a strong track record of supporting technology-focused growth companies, having invested over $2.7 billion in related investments since 2014. Permira’s investment was made through its Growth Opportunities Fund I, which focuses on minority investments in growth-focused, tech-enabled businesses. Specialized’s investment was made through its venture fund, Zone 5 Ventures, which focuses primarily on minority investments at the intersection of sports, media, technology and health and wellness. In connection with the financing, some investors will purchase shares from certain existing shareholders. J.P. Morgan Securities LLC acted as Sole Placement Agent on the financing.

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For further information, please contact:

Chris Snook, +44 (0)7833 087 739, chris.snook@zwift.com

About Zwift

Zwift is the fitness company born from gaming. We’re dedicated fitness enthusiasts that also happen to be experienced software and video game developers. Combining that passion and deep understanding of the fitness world, Zwift is the first company to use massively multiplayer gaming technology to bring the outdoor experience indoors. Athletes from around the globe can train and compete with each other in rich, 3D-generated worlds simply by connecting their existing devices & hardware (e.g. cycle trainers, power meters, treadmills, heart rate monitors, etc) wirelessly via open industry standard ANT+ and BLE. From friendly competition, to racing & structured training programs, Zwift is building a community of like-minded athletes united in the pursuit of a better social fitness experience.

About KKR

KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, credit and real assets, with strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns for its fund investors by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and driving growth and value creation with KKR portfolio companies. KKR invests its own capital alongside the capital it manages for fund investors and provides financing solutions and investment

opportunities through its capital markets business. References to KKR’s investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR’s website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co.

About True

True (www.true.global) is Europe’s only retail and consumer sector specialist that operates across the entire investment vertical. True invests in business models which represent the future of the industry. True’s Live Network model brings together its private equity companies, startup and growth businesses, investors and industry partners to add value, both strategically and operationally, across the retail and consumer spectrum.

About Permira

Permira is a global investment firm. Founded in 1985, the firm advises funds with a total committed capital of approximately US$50bn (€44bn) and makes long-term investments, including majority control investments as well as strategic minority investments, in companies with the objective of transforming their performance and driving sustainable growth. The Permira funds have made over 250 private equity investments in four key sectors: Technology, Consumer, Services, and Healthcare. Permira employs over 250 people in 14 offices across Europe, North America, and Asia.

About Zone 5 Ventures

Zone 5 Ventures, Specialized Bicycle Components’ venture fund, focuses on helping innovative technology companies at the intersection of sports, media, technology and health and wellness. Leveraging its extensive network and collective experience in sports, entrepreneurship, technology and operations, Zone 5 Ventures invests its capital, resources and expertise to help entrepreneurs accelerate growth and innovation. Zone 5 Ventures, along with its partner companies, offers a one-of-a-kind platform to enable its portfolio companies to redefine how the inner athlete in all of us harnesses technology to achieve goals and ultimately improve lives. To learn more about Zone 5 Ventures visit zone5ventures.com

DRAPER, Utah, Sept. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — 1-800 Contacts, the largest retailer of contact lenses in the U.S., today announced a definitive agreement under which global investment firm KKR will acquire the company from AEA Investors. The sale follows many years of strong growth and technology innovation for the vision brand, which was purchased by AEA Investors in 2016. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Vision Industry Pioneer 1-800 Contacts Announces Sale

Innovation is central to 1-800 Contacts’ strategy and differentiation as a pioneering direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand. Over the last several years, the company has made significant investments in technology and expanding its offerings, including acquiring vision technology startup 6over6 in late 2019 and launching new app-based offerings including ExpressExam, which enables consumers to renew contact lens prescriptions online in minutes. The company’s sister brand Liingo Eyewear also introduced Rx Reader, an app that extracts optical parameters directly from a pair of prescription glasses.

“1-800 Contacts was founded 25 years ago to offer consumers a better way to buy contact lenses. Since the very beginning, we’ve kept the customer at the center of everything we do,” said John Graham, CEO of 1-800 Contacts. “It’s gratifying that KKR sees such incredible value in our brand and that they will continue to support us in doing what we do best – delivering the best vision care to consumers with the highest quality customer service.”

Nate Taylor, KKR Partner and Co-Head of Americas Private Equity, said, “1-800 Contacts is a customer-centric, technology-enabled business that is bringing more convenience to the optical space. We are excited to invest behind John and his world-class team.” Felix Gernburd, KKR Managing Director, added, “We believe 1-800 Contacts’ singular focus on providing a consistent and high quality customer experience, fueled by industry-leading capabilities and telemedicine solutions, positions them well to continue to drive innovation in the category.”

As Americans dealt with stay-at-home orders and business closures in response to COVID-19 earlier this year, many contact lens wearers turned to 1-800 Contacts in place of traditional brick and mortar sellers. During the peak of the COVID-19 shutdown, the company experienced a 100 percent year-over-year increase in new and returning customers. During that period, usage of the ExpressExam app also increased 200 percent and the Rx Reader app experienced a 700 percent increase in monthly active users. In order to maintain the highest quality customer service, 1-800 Contacts also invested in more than 200 new hires in its Utah and North Carolina operations.

KKR is making the investment through its Core Investments strategy, which represents capital targeting longer-term opportunities.

1-800 Contacts is being advised by Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC as lead financial advisor, Jefferies Group LLC as co-financial advisor, and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP as legal advisor. CapM served as special advisor to 1-800 Contacts. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett is serving as legal advisor to KKR.

About 1-800 Contacts
1-800 Contacts is the original disruptor of the vision industry. The brand is well-known for efficient, high-quality, and delightful customer service and has advocated relentlessly on behalf of customers, paving the way for a new generation of DTC brands. 1-800 Contacts is the largest seller of contact lenses in the U.S., serving more than 20 million customers for the last 25 years. The growing portfolio of innovative 1-800 Contacts brands includes Liingo Eyewear, 6over6, Boomerang, and Premium Vision.

About AEA
AEA Investors LP was founded in 1968 by the Rockefeller, Mellon and Harriman family interests and S.G. Warburg & Co. as a private investment vehicle for a select group of industrial family offices with substantial assets. AEA has an extraordinary global network built over many years which includes leading industrial families, business executives and leaders; many of whom invest with AEA as active individual investors (“Participants”) and/or join its portfolio company boards or act in other advisory roles. Today, AEA’s approximately 90 investment professionals operate globally with offices in New York, Connecticut, London, Munich and Shanghai. The firm manages funds that have approximately $15 billion of invested and committed capital including the leveraged buyouts of middle market companies and small business companies and mezzanine and senior debt investments. AEA Private Equity invests across three sectors: value added industrials, consumer and services.

About KKR
KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, credit and real assets, with strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns for its fund investors by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and driving growth and value creation with KKR portfolio companies. KKR invests its own capital alongside the capital it manages for fund investors and provides financing solutions and investment opportunities through its capital markets business. References to KKR’s investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR’s website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co.

SOURCE 1-800 Contacts

Related Links

https://www.1800contacts.com/

3i Group plc (“3i Group”) announces that it has agreed to invest c. £60m for a majority stake in A-Z Gartenhaus GmbH (“GartenHaus”), an online leader in garden homes, sheds, saunas, and related products in the DACH region. As part of the transaction, GartenHaus’ management team and board will also invest to become shareholders in the business.

GartenHaus offers garden houses, sheds, carports, terraces, saunas and other, often bulky, garden and home related products with garden houses being its core product category. The company focuses on the high-quality, mid-to-upper priced segment of the market and differentiates itself through product development, excellent customer service and the management of complex logistics to deliver and assemble its products which weigh on average more than 1,000 kg.

GartenHaus, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, was founded in 2002 and is a pure eCommerce player. With the launch of its first online shop in 2009, GartenHaus has been the pioneer in selling garden homes directly to consumers. With around 75 employees, the company combines specialist trade product know-how with digital competence and offers a one-stop shop for customers, from planning to realisation and maintenance of garden and home projects.

The company benefits from direct interaction with its customers along the complete project journey with a high level of SEO website traffic as a result of its strong content. Driven by a further shift towards online and the increasing popularity of gardening and leisure trends, the relevant home and garden market is expected to grow by more than 10 percent per year going forward while online penetration is expected to double by 2025.

Peter Wirtz, Partner, 3i, commented: “For us, GartenHaus is a highly attractive investment opportunity. It is a niche market player with strong digital capabilities which is benefitting from the shift to online. We see GartenHaus as a nucleus to establish the online champion for home and garden projects across Europe. The key focus is to expand the product range into adjacent categories, as well as to internationalise the business by expanding into neighbouring countries such as the UK, France, Scandinavia and the Netherlands which have fragmented markets and similar product trends.”

Sebastian Arendt, CEO, GartenHaus added: “3i has a great reputation for helping its companies to grow internationally and we are excited to partner with its team at this point in our journey. The 3i team has a strong network, excellent digital capabilities and a strong track record in the consumer retail space, all of which will be of great benefit to GartenHaus.”

With the growing trend of consumers moving their purchases to e-commerce sites, the online grocery market has grown rapidly. Although the Finnish market is still smaller compared to our Nordic neighbours, it is catching up fast. Within this segment, and particularly in covid-19 stricken times, subscription-based FoodTech platforms have experienced sharp increases in sales.

Ruokaboksi’s service is based on a weekly subscription meal box, which is delivered straight to the customers door and includes all the ingredients with dinner recipes needed for the week. The company has 3 different sized meal boxes to choose from, based on preferences for e.g. vegetarian or child-friendly recipes. Also the number of recipes can be altered.

By delivering ready-made meal boxes with all the ingredients needed to prepare dinner, the service eases everyday by eliminating the age-old question of ‘what to eat today’ and cuts down the hassle of supermarket trips. Especially in the current covid-19 climate, services such as Ruokaboksi’s allow customers to stay safe at home as much as possible.

The co-founding team lead by CEO Juhana Rintala came up with the idea and joined forces when they all had small children, and were looking for ways to handle the weekly food shopping in a stress-free way.

“We see that rapid growth is needed in this is the type of business. With Innovestor’s help we have been able to invest in marketing and sales, aspects needed for growth. During our first year of operation, our revenue was around 200–300k euro, in June it was around 3 million euro. By the end of this year, we forecast our revenue will hit close to 10 million euro. Our growth curve continues to be quite steep” stated Ruokaboksi’s CEO Juhana Rintala.

Innovestor was lead investor in Ruokaboksi’s seed funding round in 2018. Since then the team has made great headway on their growth plans, resulting in us now making a follow-on investment during the summer of 2020. We were joined by the company’s previous investors, Korpi Capital and Reaktor Ventures, bringing the total funding round to 600k euro.

“The company has continued to execute strongly in a very interesting market, and we are glad support the company into their next growth phase” commented Innovestor’s Wilhelm Lindholm.

For more information: 

Juhana Rintala

CEO, Ruokaboksi

juhana.rintala(a)ruokaboksi.fi +358 45 2268320

Wilhelm Lindholm

Managing Partner, Innovestor Ltd.

wilhelm.lindholm(a)innovestor.fi +358 40 5811051

Ruokaboksi in the Media:

Koronakriisi mullisti ruoan verkkokaupan – myös ateriakassien myynti on moninkertaistunut: ”Meillä keräily ei ruuhkaudu”

Ruoan verkkokauppa ja kirjolohen kasvattaja pörssiin?– Katso pääomasijoittajien tuore lista 54 mahdollisesta pörssilistautujasta

Donier Gastronomie Oy strengthens its business by becoming a portfolio company of Folmer Equity Fund II Ky, a fund managed by Folmer Management Oy. The founderof the company, Alexandre Donier, will continue as the Managing Director and shareholder of the company with the aim of building, together with the staff, the country’s leading food wholesaler with a comprehensive offering.

Since 2003, Donier Gastronomie has supplied high-quality ingredientsfrom their European producers to quality-conscious restaurant and retail clients.The company is specialized in the import and wholesale of dairy and poultry products.In addition, it provides a wide range of dry goods, meats and processed meat products. Donier Gastronomie offersits customers a transparent and traceableproduct chain as well as aresponsible service concept that meets the customer’s needs.The company has premises in Helsinki, Tampere andTurku.In the future, Donier Gastronomie, already known as high-qualityand innovative wholesaler,will strive for an even more significant position in the market.The company reported revenue of ca. 8 MEUR for the fiscal year that ended in 2020, and it currently employs 16 people.The owners of Donier Gastronomie Oy will staywiththe company as minority shareholders.

For more information:

Managing Director, entrepreneur AlexandreDonier, Donier Gastronomie Oy, tel.+358 44033 0028, alexandre.donier@doniergastronomie.fi(in English)

Managing Director, Partner Sami Tuominen, Folmer Management Oy, tel.+358 40 708 4905, sami.tuominen@folmer.fi

Donier Gastronomie Oy is a Finnish wholesaler of high-quality food products specializing in the import and wholesale of dairy, meat, seafood and poultryproducts.

www.doniergastronomie.com

Folmer Management Oy is a Finnish private equity company investing in Finnish SMEs. Folmer creates value through active development work.

Folmer provides companies with support and professional experience –a requirement for success.www.folmer.fiFolmer Equity Fund II Ky benefits from the support of the European Union under the Equity Facility for Growth established under Regulation (EU) No 1287/2013 of the European Parliament and the Council establishing a Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and small and medium enterprises (COSME) (2014-2020).Businesses can contact selected financial institutions in their country to access EU financing: www.access2finance.eu.

Oakley Capital (“Oakley”) is pleased to announce that it has reached an agreement to sell its stake in Casa.it (“Casa”), one of the leading players in the online real estate classifieds market in Italy, to the EQT IX fund (“EQT”). Casa is part of Fund III’s investment in the online classifieds group, Casa & atHome.

Oakley originally invested in the business in 2017, as part of the acquisition of a portfolio of classifieds businesses from REA Group, which comprised Casa.it in Italy and atHome.lu in Luxembourg. Under Oakley’s ownership, Casa has significantly expanded its customer base, now servicing over 14,000 real estate agents with over one million property listings on its website.

Luca Rossetto, CEO of Casa, commented:
“This step comes after a 3-year period of significant change at Casa.it. Our technology platform, brand equity, skills and organisation are now positioning Casa.it to be a much stronger player in the Italian market. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the team at Oakley for its support and valuable contribution over this period, which has been key to the development of the company.”

Mediobanca acted as Oakley’s Financial Adviser in connection with this transaction.