What was shaping up to be one of the biggest acquisitions in the promotional products industry in recent years will now not be going forward.

Woodinville, WA-based Top 40 distributor BDA (asi/137616) will no longer be buying San Jose, CA-based Top 40 distributor BrandVia Alliance (asi/145037), according to a joint statement from both companies released early Tuesday.

Jay Deutsch, CEO, BDA

On Aug. 13, BDA announced its intent to acquire BrandVia. But as of now, final terms to close the deal are unresolved. As such, the firms have agreed to call off further talks and remain individual companies.

Top executives at BDA and BrandVia emphasized that the relationship between the distributorships is amicable. “We have the utmost respect for each other and the respective teams,” said Jay Deutsch, CEO of BDA. BrandVia CEO Jim Childers said: “Jay and I remain the best of friends. They have built an amazing organization at BDA with a great group of people.”

Jim Childers, CEO, BrandVia

Had the acquisition been completed, BDA and BrandVia would have been a distributorship with $496 million in combined 2018 North American promotional product revenue. With 2018 North American promo sales of $427 million, BDA ranked fifth on Counselor’s latest list of the largest distributors in the industry. BrandVia placed 29th on the list – a ranking determined by its 2018 North American ad specialty revenue of $69 million.

Given that it was to involve two prominent Top 40 distributorships, the BDA/BrandVia deal was lining up to be in the neighborhood of other major Top 40 acquisitions of recent years, including Top 40 supplier alphabroder’s (asi/34063) purchasing of then Top 40 supplier Prime Line (asi/79530), and Top 40 distributor HALO Branded Solutions’ (asi/356000) acquiring of then Top 40 firms Sunrise Identity and CSE.

Deutsch has told Counselor that BDA remains open to making future acquisitions.