Founder sells Innsbrook-based marketing firm Taradel to Georgia competitor

Jim Fitzgerald (Images courtesy Taradel)

A 20-year-old Innsbrook-based marketing company is under new ownership.

Taradel, a nearly 40-person firm that offers direct mail, online advertising and a web-based mapping tool to small and medium-sized businesses, was acquired in recent weeks by Georgia-based private equity-backed competitor UpSwell.

The deal was finalized on Dec. 24 of last year and was announced on Feb. 20. Terms were not disclosed. 

Taradel founder and CEO Jim Fitzgerald started the company out of a spare bedroom in his home in 2003 after decades in the print industry.

Fitzgerald said Taradel began to seek out a buyer last year to continue looking for ways to grow the business. He enlisted mergers and acquisitions advisory firm JEGI Clarity to help with the process.  

Taradel’s logo.

Fitzgerald said around 100 companies were considered as potential acquirers, a list that was then narrowed down to 10 finalists.

Fitzgerald said while Taradel got a few offers, UpSwell ultimately felt like the right choice. UpSwell is a portfolio company of private equity firm Clearview Capital and, like Taradel, provides direct mail and digital marketing to businesses in the U.S. and Canada. 

“The most important thing to me was continuity,” Fitzgerald said, “and to partner with a company that I knew was going to recognize the value of the team we assembled, and also continue with the brand, and that’s their intention.”

The Taradel brand and its office at 4192 Innslake Drive will remain, and the firm will operate as a division of UpSwell specializing in self-service, e-commerce marketing.

Current Taradel COO Wendy Urquhart will serve as president of the Taradel division, and Fitzgerald will also remain with the company. 

Direct mail is Taradel’s primary marketing option. Through its web-based application Mapfire, Taradel shows its business customers postal routes with the highest concentration of their target audience. It also works with businesses on media marketing across up to seven different channels. It has served more than 30,000 clients over the years, including the likes of FedEx Office, Staples, Canada Post and USPS. 

Fitzgerald said the sale to UpSwell provides more resources for Taradel, including access to more technology and performance reporting. Taradel offerings will also expand to include paid search, a marketing strategy that allows companies to pay search engines to place ads higher on search engine pages. 

“They do a lot of direct mail. They have buying power beyond what we have, so it gives us access to more print partners nationally,” he said. “I think it’s a great culture fit.” 

UpSwell was founded in 2020 out of a merger between Mudlick Mail, an auto-repair, dental and chiropractic direct mailer, and Muscle Up Marketing, a fitness marketing agency, according to the company’s website. It currently has around 75 employees.