Cropperware, the maker of the Page In Progress box, announced Tuesday they are seeking a buyer for the company. And they announced their “for sale” sign in a very 21st century way: via social media.
Company owner Mary Petto put the process in motion with the following on her Twitter account at 8:34pm on Tuesday: “Okay, world. We’re accepting bids for Cropperware LLC: inventory, IP, the whole enchilada. Please send inquiries to info@pagesinprogress.com.” The tweet was also cross-posted to Facebook, and transmitted to Plaxo as well.
Petto explained the untraditional approach this way:
We made the decision to sell Cropperware and its intellectual property a few weeks ago, but going the traditional route of finding an M&A expert isn’t necessarily proving the best way to go. If we can’t show them that we are a $3 million company, they hang up. We’re not sure what happened to the good old days when big businesses were opportunists looking for the next big idea, but we’ve got it, and we’ve got the social proof and orders to prove it. Twitter may be a bit casual, but who knows who will see it and take a second look? Another individual with dreams of his or her own can take our product to the next level. It’s too great a concept to keep behind the closed doors of the traditional M&A world.
There’s no way this company is worth $3M. One only needs to watch a few episodes of Shark Tank to come to that reality.
To be honest, I’ve never heard of Cropperware! What an unusual way to ‘sell’ a company!!
Ineresting. I’ve never even heard of the Pages in Progress box until this weekend – I was watching DVR’d Scrapbook Memories episode (my PBS station doesn’t air it, but my TV package now includes KBYU, so they’re all new episodes to me) and it was featured in the final wrapup. Seemed similar to the BG magnetic mat or the Arccivio (sp?)