Michelin is betting on E-commerce. In the last two years it has bought 4 companies to grow its online sales in both the tyre and passenger experience sectors.
About Restaurantes.com
Restaurants.com is a platform for finding and booking restaurants in Spain, which last year was bought by its Spanish competitor Restalo. The resulting company operated under the Restaurantes.com brand and had a network of more than 6,000 establishments in some 600 Spanish cities.
"Restalo had the support of Seaya Ventures, which led a round in the company of $10M in 2014. This round of investment enabled it to have the resources to buy Restaurantes.com a year later and continue to maintain market share. The restaurant reservation and broadcasting sector was witnessing numerous takeovers at the time, such as the purchase of Tripadvisor by Lafourchette, which in Spain was known as Eltenedor., by $140M "comments Diego Gutierrez, corporate finance expert at Abra-Invest
Michelin, growth through mergers and acquisitions to enter E-commerce
Michelin the tyre giant that has been growing through mergers and acquisitions in different parts of the world. In 2015, it decided to boost its e-commerce activity and has done so by making several purchases in the sector to boost its tyre and traveller experience business.
Its first acquisition in the e-commerce sector was the purchase of 40% from the French company Allopneus for €60 million. Allopneus specialised in online sales and installation of tyres and was ranked 12th in the top 100 French internet players.
In the same year, 2015, it also bought Blackcircles.comBlackcircles.com, the UK's number one online tyre retailer. Based in Edinburgh, Blackcircles.com had a turnover of £28 million in 2013, or 39.2 million euros at current exchange rates.
For its traveller experience division, in January 2016 it bought the digital restaurant booking platform BookaTable, with which it underlined that it had become the European leader in this sector. London-based BookaTable, which is present in more than 15,000 restaurants, signed a multi-year agreement with Michelin in March 2013 integrating its solutions into the French group's website and mobile apps.
Michelin buys Restaurantes.com for further growth in e-commerce
The purchase of the 100% from Restaurants.com enables Michelin to increase its weight in the online restaurant reservation sector, increasing its presence in many European countries and accelerating the development of its technological platform.
Thus, the Spanish online restaurant reservation market is in the hands of two multinationals: Michelin (Restaurantes.com) and Tripadvisor (eltenedor.es).
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