Kin + Carta is an international digital transformation consultancy company with headquarters in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, UK. Originally founded in 1964 as printer St Ives, it grew to be the UK's leading print company by the 1980s. It shifted focus away from the struggling print industry during the 2010s and rebranded as Kin + Carta in 2018.

History

Printing company St Ives was founded in 1964 by Robert Gavron. Then a lawyer, he borrowed to purchase a failing publishing company and renamed it after the town where it was located,

St Ives, Cambridgeshire St Ives is a medieval market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Huntingdonshire district of Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Great Ouse, and there is St Ives Bridge, a historic stone bridge dating from 1 ...

. The company grew over the next 30 years to become the foremost U.K. commercial printer, acquiring Clays and other rivals along the way. It was first listed on the LSE in 1985 and reached a market value of in 1993. St Ives expanded into the U.S. with the acquisition of commercial printer A.D. Weiss in 1989, and then later into European markets with German direct mail firm Johler Druck. In 1993 Gavron retired as company chairman, though he still held considerable interest, and was replaced by Miles Emley. In the 21st century St Ives began a serious decline along with the rest of the printing industry due to the rise of digital media, reporting its first loss in 2009. It then undertook a large series of acquisitions in the digital technology space, attempting to diversify away from print. The first purchase was digital marketing and data company Occam in 2010. The 80-staff firm was acquired for about £12 million. St Ives acquired Chicago-based software consultancy Solstice Mobile for £23 million. Solstice had been founded in 2001 by John "J" Schwan and named to

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the Universi ...

’s Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 2013. Schwan became St Ives' first chief digital officer at the time of the merger and in 2018 took over the CEO position from Matt Armitage. Also in that year the firm sold all its remaining print operations and rebranded as Kin + Carta, said to represent "connection and collaboration". In 2021 it became the first company traded on the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

to be certified as a

B Corporation In business, a company that uses the “Certified B Corporation” trademark (also B Corporation or B Corp) is a for-profit corporation certified for its social impact by B Lab, a global non-profit organization. To be granted and to maintain c ...

. In October 2023, Kelvin UK Bidco, a newly-formed UK company, owned by the private equity firm

Apax Partners Apax Partners LLP is a British private equity firm, headquartered in London, England. The company also operates out of six other offices in New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tel Aviv, Munich and Shanghai. As of March 2024, the firm had raised and adv ...

, offered to acquire Kin + Carta for £203 million. In April 2024, Kin + Carta was acquired by Valtech.

Culture

Kin + Carta describes its purpose as "to make the world work better for everyone", and to this end has adopted a

triple bottom line The triple bottom line (or otherwise noted as TBL or 3BL) is an accounting framework with three parts: social, environmental (or ecological) and economic. Some organizations have adopted the TBL framework to evaluate their performance in a broader ...

strategy. In 2021 it became the first company traded on the

to be certified as a

, and in 2022 became one of the 50 companies participating in the environmentalism initiative Vision 2045. Kin + Carta also became a member of the MACH Alliance in 2022, advocating for accessibility, inclusivity, and sustainability in the digital space.

References

{{reflist 1964 establishments in England Companies based in London Companies in the FTSE SmallCap Index 2024 mergers and acquisitions