Main Capital Partners acquires majority stake in Content Orchestration specialist WoodWing

The Hague, March 11, 2020 – Main Capital Partners acquires a strategic majority stake in WoodWing, a leader in delivering Content Orchestration solutions and services to publishers, brands, and agencies globally. The investment will enable WoodWing to build out its Content Orchestration platform and accelerate growth across its key brand and publisher target segments.

WoodWing was founded for and built its solutions to serve the publishing industry, for which content is mission-critical for business success. It is the market leader in software for magazine publishers, and has an extensive customer list of news, book, and educational publishers. The majority of its new customers are brands that face complex challenges around content creation, management, and publishing. 

WoodWing’s offering is made up of two key integrated solutions: a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution and a content creation, workflow, and publishing solution. The DAM solution is scalable and flexible, able to store millions of digital files and integrate seamlessly with the tools that publishers and marketing teams use on a daily basis. The content creation, workflow, and publishing solution enables teams to adopt a content-first approach to storytelling and work in an organized workflow, then format and publish online, in-app, in print, or to any other channel. Together these solutions enable organizations to orchestrate their content processes, reach a shorter time to market, and achieve a greater ROI on storytelling.

The organization is headquartered in the Netherlands, and has offices in the US and Malaysia. It serves 800+ customers across 60+ countries through direct sales and its extensive and growing global network of more than 70 channel partners. Key customers include Hearst, Meredith, Forbes, BuzzFeed, Coca Cola European Partners, Yamaha, and Cipla.

Going forward, WoodWing will accelerate its strategy to build a world-class Content Orchestration platform to serve its key target markets of publishers and enterprise brands. In addition, the company will strengthen its product proposition by following a selective buy-and-build strategy. 

“We have known the founders and management team of WoodWing for several years and have been impressed by their performance,” said Charly Zwemstra, Managing Partner, Main Capital Partners. “WoodWing aims to become a leading software provider in the Content Orchestration market. With the support of Main Capital Partners, the company will focus on organic growth and further product innovation. WoodWing will also strengthen its product proposition and geographic coverage by selective add-on acquisitions and by expanding its global partner network.”

“We’re very excited to work with Main Capital, an organization with extensive experience and a strong track record investing in this space. We feel this is a huge vote of confidence in our strategy and team,” said Ross Paterson, CEO, WoodWing. “Our background is in publishing, but the majority of our new customers are marketing teams with complex approval processes and fragmented technical setups. We have a strong proposition here due to our publishing expertise, and are keen to accelerate our growth in this segment, while retaining a focus on our publisher roots.” 

Key management of WoodWing will retain a minority stake in the business. 

About WoodWing
WoodWing Software helps brands, publishers, and agencies create and manage content across teams and publish across channels. We build solutions suitable for large teams to efficiently work together on creative processes, within systems that are easy to manage. Customers include Hearst, Forbes, Axel Springer, Coca Cola European Partners, and Yamaha. 

About Main Capital Partners
Main Capital is a strategic investor with an exclusive focus on the software sector in the Benelux, DACH and Nordics regions. Main has a long-term investment horizon centered around successful partnerships with management teams, with the goal to, jointly, build larger software groups. Main has approximately € 1 billion in assets under management for investments in mature and growing software companies.

The current portfolio of Main Capital includes rapidly growing software- and SaaS software companies like Optimizers, Assessio, GBTEC, Onventis, HYPE Innovation, cleversoft, Enovation, SDB Groep, Jobrouter, GOconnectIT, Verklizan, Inergy, MUIS Software, Artegic, OBI4wan, b+m Informatik, ChainPoint and RVC. Successful former companies that have grown substantially under the guidance of Main are: Connexys (HR software), Roxit (governmental software), Axxerion (facility management software) and Ymor (APM software).