Advertising Industry Mastermind, LLC, a Philadelphia-headquartered promotional products industry buying group, announced Friday that it has been acquired by Altitude Group Plc, a publicly-traded company with operations in the United States and United Kingdom.

[At left] Jamie Coggeshall; [At right] Nichole Stella

The companies didn’t announce financial terms, but Morningstar reported that Altitude plans to raise 7 million in Great British Pounds (Sterling) to fund the acquisition. “Altitude is placing 10.3 million new shares at a price of 68 pence each, raising the GBP7.0 million,” Morningstar reported.

According to the report, Altitude will pay $3.5 million in cash and $750,000 in shares at the placing price. Meanwhile, $750,000 will go into an escrow for potential deferred consideration. Additional money will be put toward working capital.

Going forward, AIM will operate under the AIM name, led by Founder/President Jamie Coggeshall and Nichole Stella, CEO of Altitude. “What Jamie has done in building AIM from the ground up is truly remarkable,” Stella said in a statement. “He has delivered incredible benefits to the AIM membership and has built a culture within the community that closely aligns with ours. My team and I are extremely excited to work closely with him to take AIM to the next level.”

Coggeshall said that linking up with a publicly-traded UK holding company will make it possible to grow AIM into a global organization that offers technology, marketing, and operational services to its distributor members and supplier partners. There’s already been progress in that regard: In 2018, Altitude Group, in partnership with AIM, launched the AIMpro Tech Suite.

“We have known Nikki for many years and have watched her build out teams that deliver on service and innovation,” Coggeshall said in a statement. “The opportunity to solidify our relationship under one company is very exciting to us.”

Composed of more than 1,900 members, AIM is a membership-based group of independent distributors with more than $1.7 billion in aggregate membership sales, executives said. The group has more than 120 promo industry supplier partners, according to the group's website. For members, AIM offers things like EQP, training, networking, discounts on shipping and more. Actively operating in 10 countries, Altitude Group provides technology and information services to the promotional products, print and clothing industries.