Shoptalk and Groceryshop, popular U.S. conferences in the retail, grocery and consumer packaged goods industries, have been acquired by Hyve Group plc, one of the world’s leading organizers of international exhibitions and conferences, for $145 million.
In connection with the acquisition, Anil D. Aggarwal and Simran Rekhi Aggarwal, Shoptalk and Groceryshop founders, together are now major shareholders of Hyve.
“We’re thrilled that Shoptalk and Groceryshop have become part of Hyve Group, a highly product-focused organization where our events can continue to advocate for and serve as important catalysts for the positive transformation of the retail, grocery and consumer packaged goods industries,” said Anil D. Aggarwal, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Shoptalk. “Anil and I are especially excited to cement our involvement long term with these events as meaningful shareholders of Hyve, and are looking forward to working with Hyve on the 2020 events,” added Simran Rekhi Aggarwal, founder and president of Shoptalk.
“Shoptalk and Groceryshop are the perfect fit for Hyve, consistent with our goal to acquire product-led market-leading events in large industries that have achieved significant size, secured distinct customer bases and developed compelling value propositions, and that hold tremendous opportunities for organic growth and international rollouts,” said Mark Shashoua, chief executive officer of Hyve. “These unmissable events share a common culture with Hyve and their acquisition delivers on our vision to create the world’s leading portfolio of content-driven, must-attend events that provide outstanding experiences and return on investment for our customers.”
In 2019, Shoptalk and Groceryshop collectively had over 11,500 attendees, including more than 1,000 CEOs, from over 50 countries as well as more than 880 exhibiting and sponsoring companies. These 2019 events facilitated approximately 11,000 double opt-in lead generation meetings between 2,000 individuals from over 775 retailers and consumer brands and more than 660 participating sponsoring companies through proprietary hosted meetings programs. The hosted programs operate on custom developed technology and have saved retailers and brands in excess of $10 million in registration fees and travel expenses in the past 24 months and will save them an estimated additional $7.5 million in 2020 alone.
As the fastest growing events in the history of their respective sectors and with Net Promoter Scores (NPS) consistently approaching 50 and above, Shoptalk and Groceryshop have established influential new standards for the events industry over the past five years, including with their industry-defining agendas, world-class speaker lineups, respected education certificates, disruptive community-building activities, unprecedented networking and collaboration programs, and groundbreaking original content produced in-house. Last month Shoptalk broke entirely new ground for large-scale conferences with a widely lauded commitment to feature an all-women speaker lineup in 2020 and 50/50 male/female speakers every year starting in 2021.
Shoptalk’s fifth annual U.S. event will be held on March 22-25, 2020 and Groceryshop’s third annual event will be held on September 14-17, 2020, both at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
K&L Gates served as legal counsel to Shoptalk and Groceryshop in the transaction, led by partner Robert Zinn, long-term advisor to companies founded and managed by Anil Aggarwal.
