Prospect Hill Growth Partners has added J&P Cycles to Comoto Holdings, the firm’s online and brick and mortar retail platform in the motorcycle aftermarket sector.
J&P was acquired from Motorsport Aftermarket Group (MAG) a Coppell, Texas-headquartered manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of branded aftermarket products across 18 consumer brands. MAG was formed by Indianapolis-based family office Lacy Diversified (LDI) in March 2014 through the merger of LDI’s Tucker Rocky portfolio company, a distributor of motorcycle and ATV aftermarket parts, with Motorsport Aftermarket Group, a portfolio company of Leonard Green & Partners, with LDI as the majority shareholder of the combined business.
In May 2017, MAG voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and in April 2018, LDI, in a debt for equity swap, was replaced as the majority owner of MAG by Monomoy Capital Partners, BlueMountain Capital and Contrarian Partners. In May 2019, Hugh Charvat, the CEO of MAG, announced that MAG would “unwind the vertical” with the company’s six operating businesses – Tucker Rocky, Vance & Hines, Roland Sands Design, Motorcycle Superstore and J&P Cycles – operating as independent companies.
J&P Cycles is an online and brick and mortar retailer of aftermarket parts and accessories for Harley-Davidson motorcycles as well as metric motorcycles including Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha and Honda (metric motorcycles measure the displacement of its engines – the internal size of the engine – in cubic centimeters while Harley-Davidson measures the displacement of its engines in cubic inches).
According to J&P Cycles, it is the leading distributor of aftermarket parts and accessories for Harley-Davidson motorcycles in the United States. The company’s products include air intake and fuel systems, brakes, handlebars and controls, speedometers, engines, exhaust systems, gas tanks, mirrors, suspensions and a host of additional products. J&P Cycles operates three retail outlets in Ormond Beach, Florida; Anamosa, Iowa; and Sturgis, North Dakota.
J&P Cycles (then J. Parham Enterprises) was founded by John Parham and his wife Jill in 1979. Mr. Parham, who passed away in 2017, is a legend in the motorcycle industry and was inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2015 and the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2006. Today, J&P Cycles has more than 300 employees and is led by President Zach Parham, the son of the founders.
Prospect Hill (formerly J.W. Childs Associates) formed Comoto in March 2016 to acquire RevZilla Motorsports, a Philadelphia-based e-commerce retailer of motorcycle apparel, parts and accessories, and to house its existing investment in Cycle Gear, also a provider of motorcycle apparel,
parts and accessories with headquarters in San Francisco, which it purchased in January 2015 from Harvest Partners. RevZilla and Cycle Gear operate as independent sister companies with headquarters in both Philadelphia and San Francisco.
With the close of this transaction, Zach Parham has joined the Comoto executive leadership team as president of J&P Cycles. “We are thrilled to welcome Zach and the talented team from J&P Cycles into the Comoto family of brands,” said Ken Murphy, CEO of Comoto Holdings. “J&P’s decades-long legacy of exceptional service and selection are hallmark tenets of each and every Comoto retail brand and will remain a driving force behind our continued high-growth in the years to come.”
Prospect Hill makes equity investments of $25 million to $100 million in companies that have revenues of $50 million to $300 million and EBITDA of $5 million to $25 million. Sectors of interest include consumer products, specialty retail and healthcare services. Prospect Hill – headquartered in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Massachusetts – changed its name from J.W. Childs Associates in May 2019 following the retirement of the firm’s co-founder and chairman John Childs.
© 2020 Private Equity Professional | February 5, 2020