BAMKO (asi/131431), a Los Angeles-based Top 40 distributor, has acquired Guardian Products (asi/215500) – a Norcross, GA-based distributorship with annual revenue of about $23 million. Financial terms of the deal, which closed May 1, were not immediately released.

All of the Guardian team will be joining BAMKO. The company is a leading provider of promotional products to automotive dealers nationwide, executives said. Going forward, the firm will be known as Guardian powered by BAMKO.

Jake Himelstein, BAMKO

The acquisition of Guardian is expected to be immediately accretive and is a natural extension of BAMKO’s December 2021 acquisition of Sutter’s Mill Specialties (asi/340210), which is also focused on the automotive dealer space, executives said.

“The acquisition of Guardian is a great fit for our expanding business,” said Jake Himelstein, president of BAMKO. “Our December acquisition of Sutter’s Mill and its production and decoration capabilities created a unique synergistic opportunity that we were eager to seize upon.”

Himelstein continued: “With the addition of Guardian, we can further leverage the Sutter’s Mill infrastructure to immediately become the dominant player in the automotive dealer space. We see this as a tremendous growth opportunity and expect significant sales opportunities to result from our unique ability to provide uniform solutions for Guardian’s existing and future customer base.”

Speaking to ASI Media, Himelstein elaborated that Sutter’s Mill has top notch decoration and production capabilities for servicing automotive clients, while Guardian has a strong sales network and customer base in that network.

“Essentially, each of these two acquisitions becomes more attractive by virtue of doing both of them,” Himelstein said. “The whole is substantially greater than the sum of the individual parts. This acquisition amplifies each of these companies, as we have more revenue to invest back into the existing Sutter's production, decoration, and distribution infrastructure.”

Himelstein noted that Guardian Products is a great cultural fit for BAMKO too – and vice versa, saying the Wise family has built a great company.

“We knew right away that BAMKO was different,” said Neil Wise, Sr., founder and president of Guardian Products. “BAMKO approached this entire process with a thoughtfulness, enthusiasm, cooperative spirit, and authenticity that got us excited about building a future together. The more we learned about the vision that the BAMKO team has for the future of this industry and the incredible business that they’ve already built, the more apparent it became that this was a special opportunity for our team that we simply could not pass up.”

With reported 2020 North American promo product revenue of $193.9 million, BAMKO ranked 11^th on Counselor’s most recent list of the largest distributors in the industry.