🠈 HandStands 🠊
What Happened to Handstands?
Handstands was a success story during the computer boom. The company was founded in 1983. I believe the original name was American Covers, Inc.. They designed mouse pads and folders for floppy discs and CDs. These products were extremely desirable at the time. They company branched into promotional products as there was a strong demand for personalized mouse pads and cases.
ADVERTISEMENT: You can find HandStand products on Amazon.com.
The company flourished alongside Novell and WordPerfect. It seemed at the time that Utah was poised to become a leader in ecommerce.
It appears that HandStands diversified into air-fresheners. The list of air freshener brands included: Refresh Your Car!®, California Scents® (California Scents on Amazon.com), Driven®, Bahama & Co.®, LEXOL® and Eagle One®.
It appears that Handstands split into two entities. A private equity called Trivest acquired the fragrance division. It appears that the promo division stayed independent.
Corporate Events
These are events that I discovered about the company in my brief spat of online research:
- 1983: The company was founded.
- 2004: The company registered the domain handstandspromo.com.
- 2008: The company launched the Bellagio Italia brand for its media cases.
- 2006: The company registered the Utah DBA "Handstands".
- 2008: Handstands created the brand Bellagio Italia for its line of media cases (as reported on Bellagio-Italia.com.
- 2013: Trivest Partners "recapitalized" Handstands.
- 2015: Trivest and Handstands acquired LEXOL from Georgia based Summit Industries.
- 2015: Trivest and Handstands acquired California Scents from its founder.
- 2016: Energerizer Products acquired the air freshener division of Handstands from Trivest for $340 million (reported by Drugstore News).
- 2017: Executives from Handstands Promo required Handstands from Energizer. (reported by ASI Central)
- 2019: HUB Promotional Group acquired Handstands (as reported by ASI Central)