Gladson Acquires Edgenet, ItemMaster

Gladson, a leading digital product content provider for the food industry, has announced acquisitions of counterparts Edgenet and ItemMaster in separate deals this week.

Chicago-based Gladson said the deals would further enhance its omnichannel content and advance its mission to become an end-to-end source of reliable product content and information that can support retailers in-store and online.

Edgenet, based in Nashville, has a network spanning more than 10,000 brands.

“Gladson and Edgenet are leading players in the product content and information management industry, each with exciting technology-enabled service offerings,” Gladson CEO Paul Salay said in a statement. He said the move to fuse “these two great companies together” came about as a way “to satisfy our clients’ desire for a single-source provider of product information across a wide variety of industries.”

Paul Salay courtesy of Gladson

ItemMaster, based in Chicago, allows brands to create, manage and distribute rich, verified, structured product attributes that meets the requirements of retailers to drive better consumer experience.

“Our clients have consistently demanded a single source of reliable and robust product information across a wide variety of categories,” Salay said. “We are excited to add to our product and health and wellness database and extend the reach of our retailer network with this acquisition.”

Gladson has been on an acquisition spree for more than a year, assembling a variety of players in the product attribute, data and publishing fields, including FSEnet ; Webcollage and Nutritionix.

Gladson is a portfolio company of the Jordan Co. and Wicks Capital Partners. Financial terms for the acquisitions were not disclosed.