A Pretty Exciting Madman Announcement
Friday, 7th March, 2014
If you are only interested in the actual announcement bit, you can probably just skip to the end of this letter. If you'd like to be “warmed up” with a bit of background flavour and a potted history first, read on!
This year marks around eighteen years since Madman Entertainment was founded (in the bedroom of a share-house), and around eight years since we (co-founders and buddies, Tim & Paul) sold our company to Funtastic, a growing toy business and public company
with ambition to expand into new areas. It was not an easy decision for us to make, having grown Madman from nothing into a successful film and television distribution business, with a great team and content that we were both passionate about.
For the past eight years since the sale, we have remained as co-Managing Directors and employees. We have been very fortunate that Madman has continued to achieve solid growth, consistent results, and has taken us in some interesting and fun new directions. We are also fortunate that we have been respected and allowed to act and feel like owners during this time. We have enjoyed working with a great team, great partners, and most importantly; we continue to be passionate about Madman and the content we represent. We know everyone says this, but we really mean it. We are actually kind of geeks. Meanwhile, our parent company Funtastic has experienced many of its own changes and now finds itself moving to an exciting new time focused on growing, developing and owning its own brands and driving sales in international markets. Involvement in a media company during a time of much industry change was not part of this vision and so various discussions around a possible sale of Madman have occurred.
Through this process (and after around eight years of thinking time), we came to realise a number of things. We realised that Madman is an amazing and unique business. We realised that we find a rapidly changing media landscape exciting and full of possibility. We realised that we wanted to keep working with great people and content we love. We realised that we wanted to be owners again.
And that leads us to the "exciting announcement” bit. We are pretty damn chuffed to announce that Funtastic has agreed to sell the business back to us as part of a small consortium that has shared enthusiasm for Madman and the potential it holds! We have just now agreed on key terms and entered into an exclusive negotiation period, with the goal of ensuring we are on the same page with all the details and then signing the final sale agreement in a few weeks from now.
We believe that this will be the start of an exciting new stage for Madman. We hope we can deliver a bit of that excitement to you sometime in the future!
Cheers!
Tim Anderson and Paul Wiegard, Madman Founders.
Madman Entertainment
Building 1 Level 1, 21-31 Goodwood Street
Richmond, Victoria, 3121, Australia
+61 3 9261 9200
madman.com.au
The announcement can also be found on Tumblr.
If you are only interested in the actual announcement bit, you can probably just skip to the end of this letter. If you'd like to be “warmed up” with a bit of background flavour and a potted history first, read on!
This year marks around eighteen years since Madman Entertainment was founded (in the bedroom of a share-house), and around eight years since we (co-founders and buddies, Tim & Paul) sold our company to Funtastic, a growing toy business and public company
with ambition to expand into new areas. It was not an easy decision for us to make, having grown Madman from nothing into a successful film and television distribution business, with a great team and content that we were both passionate about.
For the past eight years since the sale, we have remained as co-Managing Directors and employees. We have been very fortunate that Madman has continued to achieve solid growth, consistent results, and has taken us in some interesting and fun new directions. We are also fortunate that we have been respected and allowed to act and feel like owners during this time. We have enjoyed working with a great team, great partners, and most importantly; we continue to be passionate about Madman and the content we represent. We know everyone says this, but we really mean it. We are actually kind of geeks. Meanwhile, our parent company Funtastic has experienced many of its own changes and now finds itself moving to an exciting new time focused on growing, developing and owning its own brands and driving sales in international markets. Involvement in a media company during a time of much industry change was not part of this vision and so various discussions around a possible sale of Madman have occurred.
Through this process (and after around eight years of thinking time), we came to realise a number of things. We realised that Madman is an amazing and unique business. We realised that we find a rapidly changing media landscape exciting and full of possibility. We realised that we wanted to keep working with great people and content we love. We realised that we wanted to be owners again.
And that leads us to the "exciting announcement” bit. We are pretty damn chuffed to announce that Funtastic has agreed to sell the business back to us as part of a small consortium that has shared enthusiasm for Madman and the potential it holds! We have just now agreed on key terms and entered into an exclusive negotiation period, with the goal of ensuring we are on the same page with all the details and then signing the final sale agreement in a few weeks from now.
We believe that this will be the start of an exciting new stage for Madman. We hope we can deliver a bit of that excitement to you sometime in the future!
Cheers!
Tim Anderson and Paul Wiegard, Madman Founders.
Madman Entertainment
Building 1 Level 1, 21-31 Goodwood Street
Richmond, Victoria, 3121, Australia
+61 3 9261 9200
madman.com.au
The announcement can also be found on Tumblr.
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