Less than a year since Marketlive, Shopatron and Fiverun merged to become Kibo, the company owned by Vista Equity Partners has acquired Baynote, a cloud-based personalization platform.
Kibo decided to pursue Baynote after “evaluating a number of options to bring advanced personalization to our platform,” stated Kenneth Frank, CEO of Kibo, in an exclusive interview with Retail TouchPoints. “The Baynote platform has been able to successfully deliver a true individualization model” for more than 300 global brands, including Jockey, Hayneedle and The Buckle.
To date, Kibo and Baynote do not share retail customers. Some of Kibo’s current customers include Modell’s, Stein Mart and Murdoch’s Ranch & Home Supply. “Through this acquisition, Kibo looks forward to immediately offering the Baynote personalization platform to our retail and branded manufacturer clients and the broader retail industry,” said Frank. “We already have our first commitment from a Kibo customer to deploy the Baynote platform and several other customers are interested in implementing this technology.”
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“The market has shifted from course consumer segmentation to granular context-based individualization,” Bill Hustad, CEO of Baynote, told Retail TouchPoints. “This means leveraging historic and streaming consumer behavioral data and analytics to create a unified customer profile that enables Marketing teams to engage with a consumer through all touch points and delivering real-time personalized experiences regardless of channel.”
Following a smooth integration of the two companies’ services, the Baynote brand will eventually “be dissolved and the products and technology will be marketed under the Kibo brand,” Frank stated. “The Baynote personalization solution will continue to be available standalone and will also be integrated with Kibo’s omnichannel commerce platform.”
Frank added: “By combining real-time individualization with Kibo’s unified omnichannel commerce platform, retailers of any size can deliver seamless and relevant consumer experiences.”
More Acquisitions On Kibo’s Horizon?
It’s certainly a possibility, according to Frnak: While transitioning the Baynote acquisition, “we will continue to look to expand Kibo’s capabilities and scale to address the commerce industry in both B2C and B2B.”
