LionsHome acquires Franke Media and takes another step towards becoming a leading European Digital Publishing Group

Together with its majority shareholder Waterland Private Equity, LionsHome is actively working on the development of a European Digital Publishing Group: Following the successful integration of the product comparison platform Fashiola, LionsHome has now acquired the Dutch Deals & Coupons portal operator Franke Media B.V..

Established in 2014, Berlin-based LionsHome GmbH has grown to become a leading product comparison platform for home & living. With more than three million monthly users across ten countries, the company is now one of Europe’s biggest furnishing portals. The acquisition of a majority stake by growth investor Waterland in 2022 was the starting point to create a leading European commerce content group that intends to unite a wide range of digital publishing models, e-commerce as well as e-service verticals, and geographical markets under one roof. The first step in this strategic direction was the acquisition of Fashiola mid-2022, which allows users in 25 countries to compare the online offerings of a multitude of leading fashion labels.

Now, Franke Media, a leading Deals & Coupons portal operator has joined the group as the newest addition. Since being established in 2012, the company has built the most-visited discount websites in the Netherlands and Belgium. More than 1.5 million unique visitors find vouchers and promotions on the two platforms Acties.nl and Deals.be every month. These offers originate from partnerships with major national and international brands such as bol.com, Amazon, ASOS, H&M, Nike and HEMA. The shares are being sold by the company’s founder Vince Franke, who remains on board as CEO for Franke Media and will re-invest in the group in the context of the transaction.

“At Waterland we have always concentrated on long-term, successful buy-&-build strategies by establishing tomorrow’s market leaders in exciting growth markets. LionsHome once again puts us in an ideal position to become one of the leading partners for commerce content advertising with a broad coverage of e-commerce verticals, geographies and digital publishing models. We are delighted to be collaborating with Vince Franke and his team. They are highly ambitious and bring impressive SEO expertise to the table”, says Dr. Carsten Rahlfs, Managing Partner at Waterland.

“The acquisition of Franke Media represents a further important step towards our vision of assisting users in their purchasing decisions across all channels”, adds Michael Röcker, CEO of LionsHome and the Group. “By expanding our skills in the field of Deals & Coupons, we will now be able to offer even more attractive advertising opportunities to our partners in the future.”

“We are delighted to join forces with LionsHome and Fashiola in building a leading European Digital Publishing Group together. The ambition of LionsHome and Waterland matches perfectly with ours, therefore, we were quickly convinced that LionsHome is the right partner to accompany and support us in our next growth phase”, highlights Vince Franke, Founder and CEO of Franke Media. “Thanks to this partnership, we can accelerate the international expansion and help even more European users to save on their online purchases.”