Oct. 12, 2005 — PRIMEDIA Inc., EquiSearch.com’s parent company, announced yesterday that it has acquired Equine.com, the world’s largest online marketplace for equine enthusiasts.
The acquisition adds a fast-growing and profitable online marketplace to complement PRIMEDIA’s existing portfolio of equine-based properties, and enables the company to extend Equine.com’s proprietary technology and unique marketing tools to its other industry verticals and publications.
PRIMEDIA also gains the expertise of Equine.com’s Founder and President Aaron Bromagem, an online industry veteran, who will leverage his rich Internet background and expertise in building online marketplaces. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The acquisition continues the company’s pursuit to offer best-in-class mix of print and online media by providing enthusiasts with innovative applications to access content and carry out transactions across numerous verticals. With over two million visitors every month and 55,000 active classified ads, Equine.com is the leader in connecting buyers, sellers and breeders of horses and related goods. Through its proprietary technology, Equine.com facilitated an estimated $80 million in horse-related transactions over the past 12 months.
The complementary combination of Equine.com with PRIMEDIA’s award-winning equine website, EquiSearch.com, and magazines–EQUUS, Horse & Rider, Dressage Today, Practical Horseman, Arabian Horse World and Growing up with Horses–creates new opportunities for innovation among both equine enthusiasts and the advertising community.
“This acquisition has two key benefits: first, it enhances our position in the $25 billion equine market by adding a high-growth, transaction-based online business to our leading print franchises; second, it brings a technology platform and a strong management team to PRIMEDIA that can help accelerate the development of online marketplaces in other categories in which PRIMEDIA has strong brands, leading publications and well trafficked Web sites,” said Kelly P. Conlin, PRIMEDIA’s president and chief executive officer.
“This acquisition will immediately add talent and technology for EquiSearch.com and the Equine Group to leverage,” said Bromagen. “In addition, combining Equine.com’s transactional content with the Group’s award-winning content should create some great opportunities for our customers and advertisers.”
With an extensive background in both the equine industry and the Internet, Bromagem led Equine.com to become the most visited horse-related website on the Internet. Prior to founding Equine.com, he was part of Netcom’s technical team (now part of Earthlink) where he expanded their proprietary software to hundreds of thousands of customers. Shortly after, he joined Yahoo! as the ninth team member to help create the world’s leading online Web directory service. A mainstay at Yahoo!, he helped the company grow from 10 people to more than 2,000.
