Who you know is as important as what you know in today’s world. Inflexion portfolio companies can benefit from the firm’s deep network across four continents to help accelerate their growth. 

Ocorian turbo-charges its growth through acquisitions

Ocorian has benefitted from Inflexion’s rich international network as well as its experience in building businesses acquisitively, growing its headcount five-fold through five acquisitions since partnering in 2016.

The business was formed as the result of an Inflexion-led carve-out from Bedell Cristin. In under three years of partnership, five acquisitions have helped the firm increase its geographic footprint and enhance its client offering.

Most recently, the transformative acquisition of Estera in summer 2019 (completion subject to regulatory approval) will catapult the business to more than 1,250 professionals servicing over 8,000 clients from 18 key global jurisdictions. Ocorian clients will benefit from Estera's established North American presence (Bermuda, BVI and Cayman), while Estera clients will be able to leverage Ocorian's strong links to the Middle East and Africa.

Virgin Experience Days takes control of digital

Despite achieving double-digit revenue growth for a decade, management at Virgin Experience Days (VED) was aware a lack of digital leadership was limiting its opportunity, and so looked to Inflexion’s digital expertise and network to guide its journey. CTO Josh Pert explains.

“Our IT and digital capabilities were developed to serve growing online demand, reactively and by a small external agency. We lacked an effective customer data platform, which meant we couldn’t optimise customer acquisition and retention. The reliance on an external provider also meant we couldn’t easily amend our site to reflect visitors’ different browsing and buying habits – which ultimately meant fairly low conversion rates.

We needed a sustainable growth plan to see us through the coming years, and it became increasingly clear this needed to include a sophisticated digital strategy. In September 2017 we partnered with Inflexion to help guide us on this journey owing to their experience and network in this space.  Crucially, their expertise helped us internalise the function so that we could affect change more swiftly, and own the process.

The hardest thing about our digital transformation was having so much choice afforded to us by the opportunity Inflexion introduced. Ultimately it was about finding simple ways to help people do what they wanted.”

Vivona looks globally to reposition for growth

Over a five-year period, Vivona Brands metamorphosized from a UK-focussed giftware company to a professional brands business with an admirably international customer base. Vivona Chairman Simon Russell talks about how Inflexion’s international network supported its journey.

That Vivona is an international brands business belies its roots: the business Inflexion acquired in 2012 was Natural Products Worldwide, a giftware business with most of its revenues from the UK.

When Simon joined as Chairman in 2014, the business set out to eliminate loss-making runs and replenish ongoing business. This formed part of its strategy, alongside an ambitious global growth programme heavily supported by Inflexion’s in-country experts in Asia and South America. Today the firm sells into around 80 countries, and roughly 85% of its revenues are international – very unusual for a sub $50m revenue business.

“Becoming so international is hard work, and this is where Inflexion were tremendously helpful. The international experts they have really are great,” Simon explains. Inflexion’s in-country expert in China helped the company set up an online business in China and assisted in finding distribution partners. Vivona also has two customers in India, with Inflexion’s in-country expert there instrumental in the set-up. Inflexion’s Sao Paulo-based expert helped the business pursue expansion into cosmetics.