Chicago tech darling Cameo just announced a major milestone: its first acquisition.
On Monday, Cameo revealed that it’s acquiring Represent — a marketing and merchandising platform that helps celebrities and creators sell merch to their fans.
Cameo allows fans to send or receive custom videos, text messages or phone calls from their favorite celebrities. Over 40,000 actors, musicians, sports stars and other personalities are on the Cameo platform. Since Cameo’s launch in 2016, it has helped facilitate over 3 million personalized messages.
By adding the ability to buy celebrity merch on its platform, Cameo hopes to add an extra level to the fan experience, further expanding the connection fans feel to their favorite celebrities. Cameo says it’ll begin integrating Represent’s merch capabilities into its platform in 2022. The company even describes a potential gift bundle product, where fans can buy a personalized video message and merch straight from their favorite celebrities.
The Represent team will join Cameo, with Represent CMO Bobby Maylack becoming the chief creative officer at Cameo, and COO Dan Rosenberg continuing to lead the Represent team as president.
“In Cameo, we’ve found aligned visions & passion. Day one, this combined entity will allow our wide range of talent to seamlessly create and sell products their fans will love,” Rosenberg said in a statement.
Cameo is acquiring Represent from its former parent company, Custom Ink. Although Cameo will lead the Represent team, it said it will continue to work with Custom Ink in order to handle things like production, fulfillment and logistics.
Exact financial terms of the acquisition were not announced.
The news continues a busy 2021 for Cameo, which reached a unicorn $1 billion valuation care of a $100 million Series C raise announced in March. The round included a slew of major investors including Amazon’s Alexa Fund, SoftBank and GV.
