Connect with us

Technology

Front Row Group Announces Strategic Investment from Charlesbank Capital Partners

Published

on

New funding will enhance Front Row Group’s ability to execute strategic growth initiatives and deliver hyper-personalized service at scale

NEW YORK and BOSTON, Sept. 3, 2024 /CNW/ — Front Row Group (or the “Company”), an e-commerce agency and accelerator providing fully outsourced marketplace management to beauty, health & wellness, and CPG brands, today announced a strategic investment from Charlesbank Capital Partners (“Charlesbank”), a middle-market private equity firm with more than $18 billion of capital raised since inception. The investment will help the Company accelerate innovation and growth of the business, while maintaining its focus on high-quality, personalized service at scale.

With a global presence in New York, San Diego, Hamburg and Bratislava, Front Row Group leverages proprietary technology to design, market, distribute and scale leading brands around the globe. The Company tailors its diverse set of specialized services to a business’s unique needs with expertise across strategic brand-building, omnichannel marketing, international market expansion, content production, and business intelligence through its proprietary Catapult platform and innovative design and branding. This investment follows the 2023 brand consolidation that united Fortress Brand, School House, Taylor & Pond, Bizmut and Finc3 under the Front Row Group brand, providing the Company with differentiated global capabilities to better support clients across North America and Europe.

Charlesbank’s investment will enable Front Row Group to continue scaling in the fast growing and dynamic e-commerce space. The Company will be well-positioned to deliver faster, more impactful results in the operationally complex Amazon channel, helping clients optimize content, power data-driven decisions via Catapult, and manage the complicated logistics of the competitive marketplace. Through its partnership with Charlesbank, Front Row Group can further build on its track record of organic growth and accretive acquisitions, allowing the Company to accelerate its growth trajectory.

“As demand for Front Row Group’s services increases with more brands looking to unlock e-commerce growth, Charlesbank’s partnership will enable us to fully capitalize on the market opportunity in front of us,” said Yuriy Boykiv, CEO at Front Row Group. “With Charlesbank’s deep industry expertise and long track record of driving value, Front Row Group is better equipped to extend its position as a leading partner to top brands globally. We are excited to have Charlesbank’s support for this next phase of growth.” 

“Front Row Group is at the intersection of a couple of powerful long-term trends: the movement of the $300 billion beauty, health and wellness industries, particularly the premium segment, into e-commerce, and the increasing personalization of brand preference,” said Michael Choe, Managing Director & CEO at Charlesbank. “These tectonic shifts have created a significant market opportunity for leading service providers that can enable brands to reach their full potential online faster and more efficiently. Front Row Group is a clear leader in helping their brand partners achieve this. We are thrilled to partner with Yuriy, cofounders and current Presidents Alex and Matt Beer, and their team, to build on their already impressive growth.”

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Jefferies LLC served as financial advisor to Front Row Group on the transaction and Akerman LLP provided legal counsel to Front Row Group. Lincoln International LLC served as financial advisor and Kirkland & Ellis LLP provided legal counsel to Charlesbank.

About Front Row Group:

Front Row Group is a leading e-commerce agency and accelerator specializing in beauty, health, wellness, and consumer brands. With a global presence in New York City, San Diego, Hamburg, and Bratislava, the company partners with top brands to drive holistic commerce growth. Leveraging proprietary technology called Catapult and robust capabilities, they design, market, distribute, and scale brands worldwide.

Front Row Group’s expertise encompasses strategic brand-building, omnichannel excellence, international market expansion, compelling content creation, and innovative design and branding. Front Row Group ensures robust marketplace growth, seamless e-commerce management, targeted digital marketing, and actionable business intelligence.

Trusted by industry leaders like OUAI, Summer Fridays, Glow Recipe, Designs For Health, Scrub Daddy, Unilever, Bosch, and Wella, Front Row Group empowers brands to achieve their full potential in a competitive marketplace. For more, visit https://www.frontrowgroup.com/.

About Charlesbank:

Based in Boston and New York, Charlesbank Capital Partners is a middle-market private investment firm with more than $18 billion of capital raised since inception. Charlesbank focuses on management-led buyouts, growth capital financings, opportunistic credit, and technology investments. The firm seeks to invest in companies with sustainable competitive advantage and excellent prospects for growth. For more information, please visit www.charlesbank.com

Contacts for Front Row Group:
frontrowgroup@kwtglobal.com

Contacts for Charlesbank:
Ryan FitzGibbon / Alexa Ottenstein / Peter Gavaris
Prosek Partners
pro-charlesbank@prosek.com

 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/front-row-group-announces-strategic-investment-from-charlesbank-capital-partners-302235068.html

SOURCE Front Row

Continue Reading

Technology

stc group unveils its vision for AI-native networks at Network X 2026

Published

on

By

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — stc group, Saudi Arabia’s leading digital enabler, has released its AI Native Core Network White Paper during Network X 2026 outlining how it plans to evolve towards an AI-native telecom network by 2030. The paper explains how the group aims to embed AI directly into its network’s design and operations to support emerging digital services and improve reliability.

stc group continues to advance its network capabilities to support AI-driven applications and changing connectivity needs. The group is upgrading its core network, which manages user connections and delivers communications services. By integrating AI deeply into this infrastructure, stc group aims to help the network adapt to changing service requirements and resolve issues with less manual intervention.

The white paper highlights how advances in AI and 5G-Advanced, the next stage of 5G, are increasing network complexity. Services such as AI-enabled calling and immersive communications require faster, more responsive connectivity. AI agents, software systems that carry out tasks on users’ behalf, also need networks to coordinate communications and computing resources around each task.

To address these requirements, the paper sets out stc’s approach spanning AI-native infrastructure, network functions and autonomous operations. It details how the group plans to develop the infrastructure needed to run AI, embed intelligence within network functions and automate more operations. These capabilities would help the network allocate resources more efficiently and recover from faults faster, while allowing engineers to focus on service improvement and oversight.

The release of this whitepaper marks an important milestone in stc group’s network evolution, building a scalable foundation for future AI services, AI agents, intelligent interaction scenarios, and next-generation 5G-A and 6G applications. Building on its existing investments, the group aims to improve network reliability, support the next generation of digital services and accelerate the industry’s transition from Cloud Native to AI Native networks.

About stc group: 

stc group is a digital enabler, offering advanced solutions and driving a role in the digitalization process. The group provides a comprehensive suite of services encompassing digital infrastructure, cloud computing, cybersecurity, Internet of Things (IoT), digital payments, digital media, and digital entertainment. The group comprises 13 subsidiaries across The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. 

To know more about stc group: Click here  

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/stc-group-unveils-its-vision-for-ai-native-networks-at-network-x-2026-302912389.html

Continue Reading

Technology

Shoplazza Collaborates with TikTok to Bring Product Discovery Closer to Purchase

Published

on

By

The collaboration supports TikTok’s new agentic commerce experiences, with a focus on helping merchants turn customer interest into sales.

TORONTO, Oct. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Shoplazza, an AI-native commerce operating system, recently announced it is working with TikTok to support new agentic commerce shopping experiences. The collaboration reflects a shared focus on shortening the path from product discovery to purchase and helping merchants make more of the demand their content and advertising generate.

TikTok introduced Buy Direct and Shopping Assistant on October 5, naming Shoplazza among its commerce and payment partners. Buy Direct lets consumers buy directly from brands within TikTok, without being redirected to an external storefront. It uses Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) to connect with merchant systems, while brands remain the Merchant of Record.

Shopping Assistant answers product questions using merchant-supplied information on product pages within TikTok’s in-app browser. Shoppers can get the details they need before proceeding to checkout on the merchant’s website within the same browser.

For merchants, a shorter purchase journey can help protect the value of their customer acquisition spending. Redirects and repeated forms add friction just as a shopper is ready to buy. Losing that purchase means losing potential revenue after already paying to attract the customer.

“As platforms automate more decisions, performance increasingly depends on how well data, creative and checkout work together,” said Chao Xu, Director at Shoplazza. “TikTok’s new shopping experiences make it easier to buy while interest is fresh, helping merchants turn that interest into revenue and use each transaction to inform smarter marketing decisions.”

Shoplazza sees these developments as part of a broader convergence between advertising platforms and commerce infrastructure. From transaction data sharing and Instant Pages to Buy Direct, the opportunity is to help algorithms understand completed purchases more accurately while making it easier for shoppers to follow through.

The collaboration builds on an established relationship. Shoplazza’s merchant admin already supports catalog syncing, TikTok Pixel and Events API setup. In May, it was the sole winner of the TikTok Partner Innovation Award for Innovation in Marketing Technology – Commerce. In July, it joined the first group of TikTok for Business Agentic Hub partners, introducing AI Skills that connect store data and business insights with TikTok’s advertising intelligence.

About Shoplazza

Shoplazza is a global AI-native commerce operating system that enables brands to build, launch, and scale their online businesses. Built on an AI agent-native framework, Shoplazza integrates storefronts, marketing, payments, and operational workflows into a unified system designed to support scalable, long-term growth across global markets. Learn more at https://www.shoplazza.com/.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shoplazza-collaborates-with-tiktok-to-bring-product-discovery-closer-to-purchase-302912401.html

SOURCE Shoplazza

Continue Reading

Technology

Lexsoft Systems Partners With Clio to Bring Clio’s Legal AI Platform to Law Firms and Legal Departments Across EMEA

Published

on

By

Lexsoft will deliver Clio products, including Clio Work and Clio Manage, and integrate them into the systems its clients already use

LONDON and MADRID, Oct. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Lexsoft Systems, a provider of IT and business process solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with Clio, the global leader in legal AI. Through this EMEA-wide partnership, Lexsoft will deliver Clio’s platform to law firms and corporate legal departments, and integrate it with the other business-critical systems those clients run.

This agreement strengthens Lexsoft’s position as an independent legal solutions provider, and reinforces its growing presence in the UK and across Europe. It also supports the continued expansion of its carefully selected product portfolio of best-practice, global market-leading legal systems. 

Clio brings together the context of a firm’s work with trusted legal intelligence. Clio Work can draw on the matters, clients, documents, and other information already in Clio Manage, then ground that work in Clio’s global library of more than 1 billion legal documents to support research, analysis, and drafting. For Lexsoft’s global clients, that means AI designed for legal work that understands both the firm and the law.

“A practice management system is the originating point for most major legal processes — from document management and time recording through to security measures such as ethical walls,” says Carlos García-Egocheaga, CEO of Lexsoft Systems. “Until now, we’ve been reluctant to commit to a single partner, despite a wide choice of technologically robust and functionality-rich practice management systems on the market. But with the Clio platform, we’re offering customers more than practice management. Clio Manage takes practice management to a new level, from user experience to advanced functionality. Clio Work, Clio’s legal AI workspace, helps lawyers research, strategise and draft alongside Clio’s global library of legal documents. By integrating these capabilities into customers’ existing systems, we can deliver AI that works the way they do. We’re excited about the value this partnership enables us to deliver to our customers, large and small.”

The partnership lets Lexsoft build tailored environments around Clio, with deep integrations into the other systems its clients run. It helps firms across EMEA move beyond adoption of AI tools to deeper integration and a more fundamental transformation of how legal work gets done.

“Firms across Europe want AI in their daily work, and it only earns its place when it understands the context behind that work,” says Lisa Del Real, Vice President, Channel Partnerships at Clio. “Lexsoft has built its business on connecting the systems law firms and legal departments depend on. Through this partnership, Lexsoft’s clients can run Clio Manage and Clio Work on one shared foundation, so the context of each matter carries from the business of the firm into the legal work itself. They also get an implementation team that already knows how they work.”

Lexsoft is offering Clio’s products to law firms and corporate legal departments in EMEA immediately.

About Lexsoft Systems

Lexsoft provides IT and business process solutions to the legal sector across Europe, the United States, and Latin America. ISO 27017 and ISO 27001 certified, the company assists law firms and corporate legal departments (CLD) to improve their document management, knowledge management, practice management, and CRM processes, to facilitate business efficiency, improve productivity, and reduce risk. Lexsoft T3 is a proven knowledge management solution, offering one of the most comprehensive workflows for this business function. For more information, visit: www.lexsoft.com.

About Clio

Clio is the global leader in legal AI, empowering legal professionals and law firms of every size to work smarter, faster, and more securely. Purpose-built for the legal industry, Clio’s Intelligent Legal Work Platform streamlines workflows, improves decision-making, and combines powerful technology with industry-leading security. Trusted by hundreds of thousands of legal professionals in more than 130 countries, and approved by over 100 bar associations and law societies worldwide, Clio sets the standard for innovation and client success across the legal profession. Backed by world-class investors and a mission to transform the legal experience for all, Clio is defining the future of legal work through AI. Learn more at www.clio.com.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/lexsoft-systems-partners-with-clio-to-bring-clios-legal-ai-platform-to-law-firms-and-legal-departments-across-emea-302910409.html

Continue Reading

Trending