Our Strategy
Nobody owns the stack.
A consumer brand today is a thin layer of demand resting on a deep layer of services it does not own: the storefront software, the agency that buys its customers, the operator that ships them, the processor that settles them, the security that protects the checkout, the network that carries the traffic, and the data centre in which all of it resides. Each layer is a fragmented, founder-owned, profitable industry. The Group acquires across them.
The architecture of commerce
Five layers, acquired in order.
- Demand: Commerce operators The brands that sell: owned customers, first-party data, and the traffic that makes every other layer bankable. Acquired first.
- Services: Software · Marketing and retail media · Fulfilment · Cybersecurity · Telecommunications · Recruitment The services closest to demand, each a fragmented, founder-owned, profitable industry; bought once several operators trade, so each arrives with its largest customer already inside the Group.
- Automation: Payments and embedded finance · Robotics Entered by partnership before ownership, on the Group's own volume; never the manufacturer.
- Infrastructure: Data centres and edge compute · Satellite communications · Orbital data The foundation beneath all of it, owned once the Group is its own anchor tenant with a covenant history.
- Intelligence: The Group's own models Not acquired: developed on the consolidated data of the businesses above, possible only because the Group owns every layer that generates it.
Commerce is a stack. The Group acquires it one profitable business at a time, from the demand at the top to the foundation beneath, in the order in which each layer becomes bankable on the demand the Group already owns. Touch a layer to see why it is there.
The thesis
Why one layer is not enough.
A brand-only acquirer is a price-taker in every service it buys and a hostage to every platform it sells through. A services-only or software-only acquirer has no captive demand and must sell into the market every quarter. An infrastructure-only owner has the asset but not the traffic.
The value is created at the junctions: a brand whose fulfilment, media, payments, and security are supplied at Group cost rather than market price; a services business with a guaranteed book of Group demand on which to build third-party scale; an infrastructure asset with an anchor tenant from the first day. That is a structural advantage no single-layer competitor can replicate, because each of them owns only one layer.
The market learned the first half of this lesson between 2024 and 2025, when the buyers who had borrowed against demand they rented rather than owned were restructured or wound up. The Group’s rules on channel dependence, price, and integration are written from that episode.
Sectors
The thirteen verticals of the architecture of commerce, in the order in which the Group acquires them.
The thirteen verticalsFor business owners
What it means to sell to a permanent owner: discretion, a decision in writing, and your people and your name kept.
Selling to the GroupHow we work
From a confidential conversation to completion and the first hundred days, in six stages with timetables.
The processDemand first, then the services closest to it, then the foundation.
The verticals are acquired in two phases, not because the later ones matter less but because each phase supplies the demand that makes the next one bankable. Phase A builds demand and the services that sit closest to it: commerce operators, recruitment, commerce software, marketing and retail media, fulfilment, cybersecurity services, and telecommunications.
Phase B acquires and develops the automation and infrastructure beneath, once the Group has the traffic, the data, and the covenant history to be an anchor tenant of its own assets: payments, robotics, data centres and edge compute, satellite communications, and orbital data. Each Phase B layer is entered by partnership before ownership.
Acquisition criteria
What the Group looks for.
| The business | Profitable, founder-owned, or corporate-owned, in a Phase A vertical, with a second line of management in place |
|---|---|
| Revenue | From £5m; there is no ceiling |
| Earnings | Verified EBITDA of £1m or more, and a margin of at least ten per cent after platform fees and returns |
| Customers | At least 40 per cent of revenue from returning or contracted customers, evidenced by cohort data |
| Channels | Marketplace-dependent operators are admissible where they are profitable on audited figures and a written multi-channel plan, costed and owned by a named executive, is adopted before exclusivity |
| Stock | Held in the United Kingdom, the European Union, or the United States |
| Control | An acquisition of the whole; a majority joint venture with the operating decisions; or a partnership with a right of first offer |
| The founder | Willing to stay for a period after completion and to keep an interest in the business through a loan note or a rolled stake |
Declined, whatever the price.
Dropshipping without an owned brand or owned stock; single-product businesses; regulated products without a licence review; declining revenue without a documented one-off cause; businesses whose only buyer, marketer, and merchandiser is the founder; owned warehouses or fleets in the beachhead vertical; distressed or auctioned assets where the seller cannot give warranties; and loss-making technology manufacturers in any vertical.
Verified earnings, and debt the business can carry.
The Group prices a business on its verified trailing earnings and pays for growth only as it arrives, through an earn-out or a rolled stake. The greater part of the price is paid in cash at completion and is funded by term debt and asset-based facilities that the business itself can service in a bad year, together with the business’s own balance sheet; the balance is a vendor loan note, deferred consideration, or an earn-out, so that the price and the truth of the business stay aligned after completion. The lender is secured on the business acquired; the founder’s paper ranks behind the lender and is rolled; and no Group company guarantees another’s borrowing until consolidated accounts exist. Every transaction carries a full warranty and tax-covenant package, a retention or escrow, restrictive covenants, and a locked-box price with a leakage covenant.
One operating system from the first day.
Within a hundred days of completion every acquired business, whatever its vertical, moves onto the Group standard: one chart of accounts, a monthly close by the eighth working day, a thirteen-week cash forecast, Group treasury, central procurement for media, fulfilment, packaging, payments, and connectivity, one security standard, and a monthly Board pack on one template. Each business keeps its brand, its team, and its customer relationships. Value is created after the price is paid, not counted in it: from margin, as media, fulfilment, and payment rates fall for every operator; from captive demand, as the services the Group owns sell to the businesses it owns; from data, as one consolidated layer informs pricing, stock, and the next acquisition; and from capital allocation, as free cash flow is reinvested at the prices founder-owned businesses command.
Contact
Every enquiry is read by a principal.
Whether you own a business, act for one, or finance them, the conversation begins in confidence and continues in writing. The Group replies within two working days.