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Mintel Acquires Snapshots
By Louise Garnett
April 30, 2008
Important Details: Mintel has acquired Snapshots, which trades as Snapdata International. With the addition of Snapshots, Mintel will now offer research on an even broader selection of industries, including telecommunications, technology and pharmaceuticals (in addition to the food and drink, beauty, household, finance, travel, leisure and retail market reports it already produces), as well as wider coverage of markets in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. This new partnership will also give Mintel clients unique insight into the true potential of individual markets, through the combination of Mintel’s industry-leading forecasting analysis and Snapshots’ extensive historical data. For the foreseeable future, Mintel will run the Snapshots business as a separate company within the Mintel Group. Snapshots is now based at Mintel’s London offices. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Implications: Snapshots was started in 1996 by CEO Debra Curtis. She and her early team of people were ex-Datamonitor employees. Its report series reflected the same methodology of the Datamonitor approach of heavy secondary research supplemented with some primary research. One of the early differentiators for Snapshots is that it was never a paper-based report company, instead beginning as an electronic-delivery-only market research firm. It was also one of the pioneers in being able to slice and dice country information, making shorter, affordable, quality reports available for as little as $250. Outsell estimates that the company’s revenues are under $5 million. Mintel’s acquisition is a natural fit for its current business, rounding out additional vertical segments of the market. Snapshots business model is the same as Mintel’s so the two companies are a natural fit operationally. The big key for Mintel is the acquisition of some additional vertical markets such as telecommunications, technology and pharmaceutical which helps Mintel compete more aggressively against Datamonitor, Frost & Sullivan, Freedonia Group and other like companies. Mintel continues to grow through new products and acquisitions (see Insights 1 August 2007, Mintel Launches New Trend Product - Mintel Inspire).