TITAN OUTDOOR BUYS SKYE MEDIA, CIESLOK MEDIA
NEW YORK, January 2005 – Titan Outdoor has established a Canadian operation with the purchase of two Toronto companies, Skye Media and Cieslok Media. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Cieslok Media founder Jörg Cieslok is vice-president, director of national sales. Skye Media founder Danny Starnino is not involved with the new company.
Dana James and Alyea Henderson, account managers with Cieslok and Skye respectively, retain their positions with Titan, while real estate manager Mike McKague rounds out its management team.
The acquisitions give Titan about 50 large-format displays in Toronto, plus three "landmark" sites including Cieslok Media's 105-foot long display atop the Stollery Building at the intersection of Yonge and Bloor, and Skye Media's display atop the Hard Rock Cafe in Dundas Square.
"This gives us extreme strength and versatility, plus the biggest intersections in Toronto," says Cieslok. "It's very, very dominant."
Titan president and CEO Donald Allman called the acquisitions the beginning of a "serious expansion" into the Canadian marketplace. The company-which operates large-format billboards, transit ads and street pole banners in several U.S. cities including New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Philadelphia-launched an unsuccessful bid for the Toronto Transit Commission contract last summer, although plans for the acquisition were already in place by then.
This is the second time Jörg Cieslok has sold a Canadian outdoor company he founded. In 1996, he sold Cieslok Outdoor, which at the time operated vertical backlights in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton, to Toronto's Slaight Communications. He subsequently went on to establish companies in Los Angeles and Germany before returning to Canada and forming Cieslok Media.
Cieslok says the sale to Titan brings him one step closer to his goal of creating a national non-conventional outdoor advertising company.
"I always wanted the opportunity to become part of something that potentially could be so much larger,"he says. "I always liked the opportunity of working with a much larger corporation that has the ability to grow the business. It really does take quite a bit of financing and a multitude of talent in the various markets."
For more information please visit the Titan Worldwide home page at : www.titanoutdoor.com