Lehtiapaja.fi to Mediafy

Mediafy, which is the Nordic region’s biggest online retailer of magazine subscriptions has strengthened its position by acquiring Finnish competitor Lehtiapaja.fi.

Mediafy also owns the websites Tidningskungen.se as well as Bladkongen.no and Lehtikuningas.fi.

Mediafy has historically grown through acquisitions, such as its 2007 purchase of Tidningsbutiken.se, which at that time was the competitor – and happened to be ten times bigger – as well as the 2009 purchase of Blablabla.no in order to strengthen its position in the Norwegian market.

“Lehtikunigas and Lehtiapaja are budgeted to sell 55,000 and 80,000 subscriptions respectively in 2013,” says Mediafy CEO Johan Sundström. “By combining the operations and improving the volume through our IT system while using Lehtiapaja’s customer database in a smarter way, we think we can end up at 180,000 subscriptions in Finland for 2013, an increase of over 30 percent.

“The deal comes at a good time since we are right now rolling out our new product FLEX in the Nordic region. By becoming twice as big in Finland, we have a bigger incentive to develop the FLEX digital platform even more quickly.”

The deal has been under discussion with Lehtiapaja.fi for more than six months.

“The deal is strategically important considering we know from our previous acquisitions that when Mediafy reaches a certain volume in a market, you get more of everything, above all in terms of brand marketing, such as in TV commercials, for example,” says Sundström. “The purchase makes possible even bigger and more powerful campaings for magazine publishers.”