HONG KONG (BRAIN) Jan 26, 16:21 MT—Pryde Group, the parent company of Neil Pryde bikes, announced this week its acquisition of Imagine Surf, a player in the stand-up-paddle industry.
The two companies had been working together over the past 18 months with Pryde Group eventually taking over distribution for the much smaller Southern California-based Imagine.
“I suppose this marriage was inevitable,” said Imagine Surf founder Corran Addison, in a press release. “The more closely we worked with Pryde Group and the vast distribution network it has, the better things went for us. It made sense to use the Pryde Group's manufacturing power as well as their sales and distribution network.”
Pryde Group began as a sailmaker for yachts in the 1970s and soon expanded into boards. It is now involved in windsurfing, kitesurfing, stand up paddle boards, and most recently began designing road bikes. It exhibited at Interbike for the first time last year with its Alize and Diablo road bikes and earlier this month showed the prototype of the new TT Bayamo bike at the London Bike Show. This year the company is the bike sponsor of the UnitedHealthcare pro continental road team.
The Pryde Group also owns the factories that manufacture Orca and Quintana Roo wetsuits and compression garments for 2XU. Imagine formed in 2002 in Montréal, Canada, and moved to San Clemente, California, in 2010 after securing investment needed to accelerate growth.
