Paul Gedman鈥檚 goal is to disrupt the world of private equity.
In a former life he headed up the beauty division at THG, overseeing 10 acquisitions.
Then in 2020 he joined forces with another THG colleague, former CEO of Myprotein Andy Duckworth, to launch Manchester-based eComplete.
A year later they made headlines with a 拢50m investment into eCommerce beauty business CurrentBody but have largely stayed under the radar 鈥� until now.
The company hope to announce their second investment before the end of the year and have ambitious plans for the eCommerce space.
According to Gedman, eComplete has spent much of the last three years building the foundations that it believes can help turn UK eCommerce companies into global brands.
鈥淭he real reason for us launching eComplete was to disrupt private equity,鈥� admitted Gedman.
鈥淗ow are we going to do that? We understand eCommerce very well. To enable us to compete with typical PE we have to build the eCommerce foundations that haven鈥檛 been commoditized by the market – data, talent, global infrastructure and scale – and wanting to share these with our partners as well.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not just acquisitions and investments. We have the agency side of the business.
鈥淎ll the foundations that we鈥檝e built we feel that they鈥檙e usually reserved for the 拢500m plus businesses but we want to democratise access to that.”
Gedman was speaking at eComplete鈥檚 recent 鈥榚Commerce meet-up鈥� event at KPMG鈥檚 Manchester office, where industry experts shared their insights in the sector.
He shared a panel with his co-founder Andy Duckworth, whose background is in sports nutrition while his is in beauty.
Explaining their approach Gedman said: 鈥淭he fundamental thing we look at is data. We鈥檙e not category specific. We鈥檙e quite agnostic.
鈥淎nything in eCommerce, anything that demonstrates it has the potential to be a UK leader or is a UK leader that we believe we can globalise (interests us).鈥�
Gedman said there were two statistics that convinced them that the private equity sector was ripe for disruption.
鈥淭he reason we focus on private equity is that 75 per cent of all value that comes out of eCommerce exits goes to private equity, VCs (and) hedge funds. The majority of the money doesn鈥檛 go to founders or the teams doing the doing.
鈥淥nly 2.5 per cent of funds return more than 30 per cent IRR (internal rate of return) by the time they get to the third fund.
鈥淲hy do they get poor results? A lot of them aren鈥檛 eCommerce operators and don鈥檛 understand the dynamics that impact on an eCommerce business. We do a hell of a lot more than typical private equity.鈥�
Co-founder Andy Duckworth, MD Anna Graham, co-founder Paul Gedman, eComplete
Gedman said CurrentBody was a perfect example of how eComplete can add value.
In the first 12 months after their 拢50m investment in 2021 a total of 28 members of eComplete鈥檚 staff worked in the CurrentBody business.
鈥淚f we鈥檙e going to impact eCommerce businesses we need to be able to understand, in the data, the issues that they鈥檝e got and provide businesses with access to talent and opportunities,鈥� explained Gedman.
He told the audience at the eCommerce meet-up that they鈥檇 entered into an exclusivity deal with a second company that they聽 plan to invest in.
CurrentBody is star of Northern Tech Awards as winners revealed
鈥淟ike any business we鈥檝e had to prove ourselves,鈥� he said. 鈥淐urrentBody was an opportunity we couldn鈥檛 pass up on. We actually did that deal when we were under one year old.
鈥淲e鈥檝e spent the last couple聽 of years building those foundations to make sure that they work and that we can have high impact of eCommerce businesses.
鈥淲e鈥檝e seen the impact they can have on CurrentBody so we鈥檝e almost got all the proof points we need now. That acquisition is going phenomenally well.鈥�
The other speakers at the event were Laurence Newman, co-founder, CurrentBody; Anna Graham, managing director, eComplete; Ed Prior, KPMG; Les Yates, strategy director, eComplete; Tim Hamilton, partner, Pannone Corporate; David Meakin, Shopline; Joel Williams, ChaChing; Danielle Nichol, REFY; and Alice Oakford, founder of Social Honey.