Atlanta-based East West Manufacturing has acquired Innovolt, combining two innovation-focused firms in Atlanta with complementary strengths and sales spanning the globe.
Innovolt’s products protect and monitor companies’ electronic assets, guarding them against the effects of power outages and sudden surges.
East West has long been a supplier for Innovolt, and the companies’ leaders believe its global design and production capabilities will help Innovolt continue to serve its customers and distributors well.
“Innovolt has delivered hundreds of thousands of proprietary products to support their customers for a decade – we want to continue to serve these customers and markets with the same leading technology and support,” Scott Ellyson, East West co-founder and CEO said in a release announcing the deal Nov. 14. Terms were not disclosed.
East West has a joint venture motor factory in China and works with partner factories all over that country to produce an extensive catalogue of parts, including motors and components for electronics, robots and medical equipment. It also has a sourcing office in India and owns factories in Vietnam.
Innovolt was spun out of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center in 2007 and has surged since then, finding customers in places like Canada and South Africa, where long distances or unreliable grids make it costly to leave equipment unprotected.
With a product built on more than 20 years of research and some 32 patents, Innovolt climbed to No. 31 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2013 and has also been honored since then by the Technology Association of Georgia, Atlanta Business Chronicle and Forbes.
The deal is East West’s first major buy since attracting a strategic investment from Heritage Growth Partners LLC last May, in part with the intent to grow through acquisition.
In the process, East West landed Bob Nardelli on its board of directors. The former Home Depot and Chrysler CEO said in a release that the Innovolt deal shows why it was important to recapitalize East West. Mr. Ellyson said in early November, just a week before the Innovolt transaction went live, that the company’s leaders were excited about what the earlier deal would mean for “acquisition initiatives.”
“This acquisition aligns perfectly with our strategy of building our portfolio by incorporating companies offering innovative products to their customers,” Mr. Nardelli said in the news release. East West is actively seeking to buy other contract manufacturers or product suppliers with sales of $10 million-$50 million and earnings of $1 million-$5 million, according to a Heritage Growth Partners email. Some criteria include domestic factories, long-term customers, strong management and proprietary products.
The deal with Heritage was named by the Atlanta Chapter of The Association for Corporate Growth as one of the deals of the year in 2016-17, with the organization noting that East West is on the way to $100 million in annual revenues.
East West also has a new logo and recently launched a new website.