Riverside Partners' portfolio company, Loftware, Acquires Gap Systems

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. and BOSTON, March 8, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Riverside Partners, a Boston based private equity firm, announced today that its portfolio company, Loftware, Inc., the global leader in Enterprise Labeling Solutions, with over 5,000 customers in 100 countries, has acquired Gap Systems, a leading provider of SaaS based artwork management solutions headquartered in the United Kingdom. With this announcement, Loftware extends its global presence and offers a new cloud-based digital platform with solutions that redefine how enterprises create, manage and print complex labeling and packaging artwork, and scale across their operations.

With this acquisition, Loftware unites complementary companies, teams and solutions. Loftware dynamically addresses a complete range of customer and regulatory mandates by producing mission-critical barcode labels and documents across the supply chain, while Gap Systems controls complex packaging artwork processes throughout the product lifecycle. Together, they uniquely address the full spectrum of labeling and packaging artwork requirements across a broad range of industries, with a special focus on Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, Manufacturing, Food & Beverage, Chemical, Retail, Consumer Packaged Goods and more. The combined platform?whether used for labeling, artwork management or both?enables customers to improve time to market, mitigate risk, reduce supply chain complexity, optimize costs and increase agility.

"Several years ago, Loftware partnered with Riverside Partners to embark on a meaningful expansion of our business. With the support of the team at Riverside, we are transforming the Label and Artwork Management space by delivering this unprecedented platform," commented Loftware President and CEO, Robert O'Connor, Jr.

David Belluck, General Partner at Riverside Partners, added, "Our investment thesis for Loftware anticipated growth both organically and through selective strategic acquisitions to extend its leadership position in enterprise labeling. With their sustained performance and now the acquisition of Gap Systems, Loftware is well on its way to achieving those objectives."

This acquisition provides customers with complete range of capabilities all in one scalable, highly configurable set of solutions. Available for SaaS, cloud-based or on-premise deployment, the platform integrates with existing business processes and empowers business users to manage variability with dynamic, data-driven printing to ensure greater consistency and accuracy.

"Loftware and Gap offer truly complementary solutions that the market needs, especially as companies look to standardize on a single platform that can create, manage and print labels and packaging artwork across worldwide operations," stated Gap Systems Founder and CEO, Paul Goldberg. "Now internal and external stakeholders in packaging, regulatory, quality, operations, manufacturing, supply chain and marketing can address a more extensive set of requirements."

About Loftware
Loftware, Inc. is the global market leader in Enterprise Labeling Solutions with more than 5,000 customers in over 100 countries. Offering the industry's most comprehensive labeling solution, Loftware's enterprise software integrates SAP®, Oracle® and other enterprise applications to produce mission-critical barcode labels, documents, and RFID Smart tags across the supply chain. Loftware's design, native print, and built-in business rules functionality drives topline revenue, increases customer satisfaction, and maximizes supply chain efficiency for customers. With over 30 years of industry leadership, Loftware's Enterprise Labeling Solutions and best practices enable leading companies to meet their customer-specific and regulatory requirements with unprecedented speed and agility.

About Gap Systems
Based in Leeds, UK, Gap Systems has been a noted leader in Artwork Management for over 15 years, providing solutions to leading companies in consumer-packaged goods, food & beverage, pharmaceuticals and other industries. With a focus on helping companies in regulated industries achieve compliance, Gap Systems offers solutions designed to support complex packaging artwork processes throughout the product lifecycle and across a range of stakeholders.

About Riverside Partners
Founded in 1989, Riverside Partners is a middle market private equity firm currently investing Riverside Fund V, L.P. The fund focuses on growth-oriented companies primarily in the healthcare and technology industries. Riverside Partners is particularly experienced at partnering with founders, owners and management teams and it brings substantial domain expertise and operating experience to its portfolio companies. For more information, visit www.riversidepartners.com.

SOURCE Riverside Partners