BloomReach Acquires Hippo, Creates Content Management Business Unit

by Laurie Sullivan@lauriesullivan, October 26, 2016

BloomReach took a leap into content management Wednesday, announcing the acquisition of Hippo, which allows companies to manage apps and Web properties. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Hippo will continue to operate primarily from Amsterdam, with a location in Boston, as an independent business unit of BloomReach focusing on content management.

As part of the agreement, Hippo CEO Jeroen Verberg will remain with the company and will join the BloomReach Board of Directors. Hippo, founded in 1999, was bootstrapped funded, as opposed to taking funds from venture capitalists.

The Web content management market is expected to reach more than $8.25 billion by 2021, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of about 16.2%, according to Markets and Markets.

Hippo’s 100 employees, who mostly support government, insurance and educational markets, will join Bloomreach’s more than 200 employees.

Hippo’s clients include Kohler, REI, University of Maryland, and U.K. National Health Service. The company works with more than 150 customers in 13 countries. Bloomreach focuses mostly on commerce supporting Neiman Marcus, Sears Outlet, Staples, Williams-Sonoma, and many others.   

There is very little overlap in clients, said Raj De Datta, CEO and cofounder of BloomReach. “When you put the two companies together you get a pretty good global footprint,” he said. “Prior to this transaction the majority of the clients were in the U.S.”

The combined companies will give an alternative to rules-based experience-management vendors that cause significant integration and management expenses. De Datta wants this to become the first “digital native experience platform” by combining the data that lives in bucket A with the content that lives in bucket B.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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