Perch

In May 2021, Perch CEO Chris Bell needed to decide whether his e-commerce aggregator company, which bought and scaled Amazon Marketplace brands, should acquire up to three acquisition targets. The prospective acquisitions, Web Deals Direct, HomeCo, and Future Brands, were much larger in size and complexity than Perch’s previous deals. Acquiring one or more businesses could help Perch grow but could also prove challenging from an operations and integration standpoint. In addition, Bell had decisions to make around financing the acquisitions. He had received a term sheet for $100 million from a private equity firm and an offer of up to $500 million from Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. The offer from SoftBank might provide the level of funding Perch would need to achieve market leadership in a crowded aggregator space but could put pressure on Perch to grow too quickly in pursuit of being a category champion.