Media production company Deluxe has acquired cloud-based platform developer Sundog Media Toolkit. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The acqui-hire sees the founders of UK-based Sundog, Richard Welsh and Chris Ralph, join Deluxe in senior executive roles, with Welsh becoming SVP for Innovation in January 2021.
Sundog was founded in 2013 in Bristol, England, and has a handful of employees on LinkedIn. Its flagship product is a cloud-based workflow management platform that supports tools for post production. Basically, a SaaS solution for mastering and versioning of TV and movies at scale.
Deluxe boasts sizable localization operations as well as digital cinema, home entertainment, and fulfilment operations. The company was created when century-old media production giant Deluxe Entertainment sold its distribution business in July 2020, less than a year after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The distribution business, now known as Deluxe, was taken over in the sale by California-based private equity firm Platinum Equity, which was previously owned by US billionaire Ron Perelman.
The only Deluxe Entertainment divisions that were not sold were the company’s creative businesses, which include Company 3 and Method Studios.
Deluxe (excl. creative businesses) is now in the hands of Platinum Equity CEO Tom Gores, who immediately reinstated several former Deluxe execs — most notably CEO Cyril Drabinsky, and CFO Mike Gunters — to lead the company.