AEA Acquires Melissa & Doug
AEA Investors’ Middle Market Private Equity team announced today that its fund has closed the acquisition of Melissa & Doug, LLC.
New York – June 22, 2017 – AEA Investors’ (“AEA” or the “Firm”) Middle Market Private Equity team announced today that its fund has closed the acquisition of Melissa & Doug, LLC (“Melissa & Doug” or the “Company”). Melissa & Doug is a leading designer and manufacturer of children’s toys, including wooden puzzles, arts & crafts products, plush toys and other educational toys.
Founded in 1988 by husband and wife entrepreneurs, Melissa and Doug Bernstein, Melissa & Doug is one of the most beloved toy brands in the U.S. Since its inception, Melissa & Doug has been focused on creating authentic, innovative and high quality toys at accessible price-points which reimagine classic play patterns to promote open-ended, creative free-play for new generations of children. With a highly differentiated brand and proven extendibility across channels and geographies, the Company has diverse growth opportunities including continued penetration of the mass channel, underlying growth of Amazon and the e-commerce channel, product category extensions and new channel penetration as well as continued growth internationally.
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 65 investment professionals operate globally with offices in New York, Connecticut, London, Munich and Shanghai. The firm manages funds that have approximately $10 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 Melissa & Doug
Melissa & Doug is a designer and manufacturer of children’s toys, including wooden puzzles, arts & crafts products, plush toys and other educational toys. The Company was founded in 1988 by Melissa and Doug Bernstein. Today, the Company has over 575 employees worldwide and is headquartered in Wilton, Connecticut.
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