Target Report: Think Outside the Rectilinear

As we have noted in prior Target Reports and emphasized in our Annual Review, the salad days for wide-format printing are over. Digitally printed banners and wraps are no longer unique, flatbed printing devices are ubiquitous, and the high margins that came with being an early entrant in the market for large inkjet prints have been compressed by competition. Entry-level equipment is no longer excessively expensive, flatbed cutters and other finishing technologies are widely installed.

Differentiation in the wide-format business has moved from those that had first-mover advantage to businesses such as those that have perfected more complex online direct-to-customer systems, robust planning and installation capabilities, or value-added services such as printing on canvas for use as home or office décor. The ability to print, stretch, and mount printed fabrics in a multitude of formats, venues, and environments is one such specialization.

Moss, a wide-format fabric printing company based in Franklin, Illinois, has grown to in excess of $100 million in revenue by staying focused almost exclusively on the unique niche application of graphic tensioned fabric installations. That growth has come via the serial execution of acquisitions, each expanding its geographic range and breadth of applications, but remaining laser-focused on the use of printed fabrics held in tension.

With financial backing from private equity firm EagleTree Capital, Moss acquired Rocket Graphics. The acquired company, based in Watford, UK, is Moss’ second purchase of a UK-based company, and expands on its European presence, which also includes operations in Germany and Poland. Rocket Graphics prints super-wide format visuals for stadium events, trade exhibitions, stage productions, retail displays and other large graphic applications. It is no accident that the company boasts of its extensive installation capabilities as the selling owner started his career as an installer. Onsite installation of very large projects is evidently deep in the corporate DNA, which was clearly a driver in the matchup with Moss.

That acquisition followed closely on the heals of the announcement in December 2024 that Moss had acquired Stretch Shapes, an innovative company based in Eugene, Oregon, that brings the use of tensioned fabrics to a whole new level. In addition to the usual and expected use of printed fabrics for branding, the acquired company uses stretched fabric to create borderless projection screens, colorful wall panels, event entrances, ceiling panel sails, and unique outdoor shade structures.

From Pop-Up Tents to Architectural Icons

Bill Moss, an artist and industrial designer, forever changed outdoor recreation with the invention of the pop-up tent in 1955. After a stint in the US Navy, he pursued an education in art at the famous Cranbrook Academy of Art in his home state of Michigan. After graduation, Moss landed his dream job as an illustrator for Ford Times, a travel magazine produced by the Ford Motor Company. An avid outdoorsman, duck hunter, and ice fisherman, he was frustrated by the heavy canvas upside-down-V-shaped pup tent design that dates back to the civil war. His industrial design training kicked in and what emerged was the now ubiquitous lightweight fabric tent held in tension by flexible support poles.

Moss was convinced that he had come up with a hit design and cleverly named his invention the Pop-Tent. In a burst of enthusiasm, he patented the concept and proceeded to order 1,000 Pop‑Tents. To his great disappointment, his first customer, outfitter company Abercrombie and Fitch, placed an order for one Pop-Tent. Things changed for the better when Life Magazine ran an article, with photos, of Bill and his family camping out in a roomy and easy-to-assemble Pop‑Tent. The tent was a hit. Many elegant beautiful new tent designs followed in the ensuing decades, along with articles in Time Magazine, Esquire, and GQ. Tensioned fabric structures designed by Moss were exhibited in the Louvre and the Smithsonian, and his 1978 Stargazer Tent was placed in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

The Trade Show Transformation

Bill and his wife Marilyn had moved to Maine and established the Moss Tent Works, utilizing local labor to sew and manufacture the unique tent products. The couple were living the Bohemian lifestyle of the times. They spent their summers in a large multi-room tensioned fabric treehouse tent mounted thirty feet up in the Maine pine trees on a 50-by-50-foot-wide platform. However, there were ups and downs in the business, as Bill had the artist’s inclination to move on to another project before completely realizing the benefits of his last design.

Seeking to save costs, the Moss Tent Works company designed its own trade show exhibit using tensioned fabric to showcase its unique tents. Marilyn, who was focused on the business aspects of the company, took it upon herself to assemble the lightweight elegant display. Accomplishing the task in mere minutes, all while wearing high heels, she impressed the other exhibitors with the new type of trade show display (at least that is the story). Recognizing the potential of using printed stretched fabric for trade show displays, Marilyn spearheaded the company’s pivot into custom trade show exhibits, and in the process introduced tension fabric technology to the global graphics market.

Eventually, the couple divorced, Bill Moss moved to Arizona to pursue his art, and Marilyn took over the management of the business. She guided the company through strategic transformations, focusing increasingly on the more profitable trade show display business. In 1994, the year Bill Moss died, Marilyn sold the tent division to outdoor company REI and focused exclusively on the graphics business. By 2000, Moss Inc. had grown to $15 million in revenue and 164 employees before being sold in its first successful private equity investment transaction.

Global Graphics Powerhouse - Via Acquisitions

In 2008, Los-Angeles private equity firm Century Park Capital Partners acquired the renamed company, Moss, Inc. Century Park guided the company through four strategic acquisitions, exiting the investment in 2016 with the sale to EagleTree Capital (formerly known as Wasserstein & Co.)  Under the ownership of EagleTree Capital, Moss has completed three additional acquisitions and moved the company into a new 180,000 SF global headquarters in Franklin Park, Illinois. In 2018 and 2023, the company invested in new production facilities in Changzhou, China and Poznań, Poland, respectively, establishing the company as a global player in the market for large-scale tensioned fabric graphics.

The Moss company has now completed a total of nine acquisitions, each one expanding the company’s reach and depth, but nonetheless staying close to the core mission of creating unique environments, spaces, and branding using graphic imaging technologies. The company provides a great example of executing a proactive coherent M&A strategy to expand within a relatively narrow niche market.

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Originally, a quirky, but innovative, tent company, Moss was transformed via the insightful recognition by Marilyn Moss of a serendipitous positive response when graphics were applied to tensioned fabrics. With financial backing and guidance of sequential private equity firms, the Moss company has grown into a global provider of what it calls “immersive branded environments,” also known as experiential graphics.

In addition to developing unique capabilities that fueled the company’s growth, Moss used its M&A strategy to expand its capacity and extend its geographic footprint. Both of these rationales are consistent with the dominant trends we found in our annual analysis of M&A activity in the wide-format printing segment. (For more see: The Target Report Annual Review – 2024 M&A Activity.)

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View The Target Report online, complete with deal logs and source links for February 2025

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