Private equity firm ESW Capital has bought SLI Systems, the site search vendor said Tuesday. The purchase price was not disclosed in the announcement and ESW did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the purchase price.
SLI is used by 48 retailers in the Internet Retailer 2018 Top 1000 and ranks No. 3 among site search providers to the Top 1000. It will become a part of ESW’s Think3 portfolio, a $1 billion private equity fund that purchases software-as-a-service companies that has acquired 75 companies over the last 15 years, ESW says. SLI’s retailer clients include Lenovo Group Ltd. (No. 99) and Rugs Direct (No. 703). SLI operates on five continents and its software is available in 20 languages.
As part of the deal, Andy Tryba, Think3 founder, is now SLI Systems’ CEO.
“SLI has a great history of bringing innovation into the retail search space. Now as a part of the ESW and Think3 family of companies, we will invest further in enabling strong search ROI for our customers and enable them to continue to grow their businesses,” Tryba says. “The added resources to SLI will enable us to scale, grow and increase the speed to which we bring our innovations to market.”
SLI’s site search product also makes predictions about which products shoppers are most likely to buy. SLI recently launched new filtering, analytics and merchandising tools, including software that allows merchandisers to boost, suppress or hide various product attributes based on shopper behavior, and a tool that enables retailers to test boosting selected products to the top of search results or “above the fold” on a page to promote visibility.
Favorite