NEW YORK -- GroupRed LLC, the retail environmental design agency, has merged with Colemanbrandworx Worldwide Partnership LLC (CBX), a strategic branding and design company with offices in New York City, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Los Angeles. The new company will retain the Colemanbrandworx name.
GroupRed will bring to the merger its experience and expertise in retail design and operations consulting. The New York-based firm has been engaged in market diagnosis, brand strategy, corporate identity, retail program development, facility design and merchandising [image-nocss] and operations consultation for such internationally known companies as Stop &Shop Supermarkets, Statoil, ChevronTexaco, Daiei, Nestl a, Petro-Canada, Frito-Lay and McCabe's Pharmacy.
In turn, Colemanbrandworx has provided branding and creative services for such companies as Johnson & Johnson, General Mills, Nestl a, Scotts-MiracleGro and Snapple Beverage (Cadbury-Schweppes).
The new, reorganized CBX will offer a full range of branding and design services, from brand strategy and positioning to consumer product branding, corporate identity strategies, retail store design and merchandising/operations consulting.
The combined company will employ approximately 100 people in the U.S., with four regional offices. Additionally, through joint ventures, CBX expanded its worldwide partnerships outside the United States during 2005, with operating offices in Santiago, Buenos Aires, San Paulo, Mexico City, Melbourne, Shanghai, London and Amsterdam.
Over the years, GroupRed and CBX have both worked with any number of premiere brands, said Joseph Bona, president of GroupRed, who will continue in that role for the retail arm of the combined company. By pooling our resources, we've strengthened our ability to deliver innovative, strategically focused, brand-centric solutions, making ourselves an even more valuable resource for our clients.
The merger represents a reunion of sorts for Bona, Gregg Lipman, managing partner of CBX New York, and Owen Coleman, CEO of Colemanbrandworx Worldwide Partnership, who previously worked together at FutureBrand Coleman, which was a division of media giant IPG. When Bona left to form GroupRed in 2003, and Lipman in 2004 to start CBXboth with Coleman as their partnerit was with the intent of someday bringing together the talent, resources and service offerings to form a fully integrated brand consultancy that could help leading corporations drive brand performance.
It was just a matter of time before we merged and fulfilled the vision we had several years earlier, said Bona.
Coleman, who has been in the industry for more than 40 years, added, In a business like ours that is primarily project-to-project, we have successfully created long-lasting relationships with our clients by consistently delivering work that is strategically and creatively meaningful, by obtaining results for our clients, and by doing it all in a way that fosters trust. In bringing these two firms together, we are simply expanding our ability to service clients in a richer way.
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