celebrate company (“celebrate“), the Munich based leading online distributor of personalized stationery and photo products in Europe, has a new minority shareholder with the European private-equity company EMZ Partners (“EMZ”). The management team increases its stake in the company. The joint focus of the founder Christoph Behn and the new shareholders is accelerated growth.

celebrate group, which was founded in 2010, has developed into the European leader of personalized cards. In addition to stationery and photo products, its range also includes the celebrate app which offers photo cloud solutions allowing users to share pictures and converting them into high-quality printing products in just a few steps. Celebrate company’s core and origins lie in the love brand «kartenmacherei».

Pava Partners exclusively advised EMZ Partners and Christoph Behn on the acquisition financing. Closing successfully took place on 23 March 2021.

„We are delighted to have gained EMZ as a flexible and entrepreneurial partner that will share our growth plans and support us in signaling the start of the next development stage of celebrate company”, says founder and majority shareholder Christoph Behn. „Alongside the roll-out of new product categories and the further expansion of our photo cloud range, we have identified international expansion as a major growth path. We believe that EMZ – being a pan-European investor – can make a significant contribution to this.“

Klaus Maurer, partner in the Munich Office of EMZ Partners, comments: „The market for high-quality personalized photo products will continue to have an attractive future growth profile. celebrate is in an excellent position to continuously benefit from the constant shift to online business, the rising demand for premium products and an increasingly professional design of greeting and invitation cards for private events.” He adds: “We would like to thank Pava Partners for arranging a highly flexible acquisition and growth financing solution that excellently supports the organic as well as inorganic growth path of the company.”

About EMZ

EMZ is a leading European investment firm with offices in Paris and Munich. The firm focuses on medium-sized companies and offers flexible capital solutions in strong partnership with founders, family shareholders and managers. EMZ is majority-owned by its own employees and has a base of European institutional investors. The current fund has a volume of more than 1.0 billion euros and its investment size ranges from 10 to 150 million euros.

About celebrate

Under the roof of celebrate company, 350 employees are developing and producing digital services and stationery products all about the most important moments of life in four different offices in Germany. The rapidly growing group’s origins lie in the market-leading brand kartenmacherei which was founded in 2010 and continues to be the company’s core and love brand. Millions of customers in Europe are fascinated by celebrate company’s brands with their wide portfolio of more than 200,000 stationery and photo products, the celebrate Apps as well as very high design standards, service and usability.