Last week’s acquisition of SeriousEats and RoadFood by newcomer publishing house Fexy Media was just the start.
Formed by husband-and-wide team Cliff and Lisa Sharples following Lisa’s steering, as CEO, of AllRecipes to a $175 million acquisition by Meredith, Seattle-based Fexy plans more acquisitions of its own.
“We continue to build out the category in and around the kitchen table,” Cliff tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We are continuing to look for more video capabilities, creators that specialize in digital video.”
Fexy has aloready gobbled up SmartyCents, Relish, Spry Living, Daily Parent, MonkeySee, The Food Lab and American Profile, in addition to its latest additions. Bulking up further may be tough – there is no shortage of online cooking and lifestyle sites.
But, as AllRecipes demonstrated, upstarts can eat in to established media empires. And Fexy is backed by a $40 million fund created with Austin’s Tritium Partners, The New York Times says.
“There was an opportunity to create a roll-up strategy where we’d acquire a set of brands in these categories and centre on digital video,” Sharples tells Beet.TV.
“There are a lot of players and a lot of competition, but we feel like there’s an opportunity to really build brands that centre on digital video, that are specifically engineered for the millennial audience.”
Joining the Sharples in co-founding Fexy is Ben Sternberg, former media banker with Raine. He serves as CFO.