One of Cincinnati’s largest branding agencies acquired, buyer plans rapid growthBy Liz Engel – Digital editor/Cincy Inno editor, Cincinnati Business Courier - May 27, 2025
Coho Creative, which specializes in brand strategy, brand activation and design, has beenacquired by Product Ventures, an agency based in Fairfield, Conn.Terms of the deal, finalized in February and formally announced in March, were notdisclosed. The combined company is now operating as PV&Coho ahead of a completerebrand planned this summer.Jon Shapiro, founding partner and chief creative officer for COHO, considers it a win. The acquisition, he said, means the company can grow. “It’s a perfect match,” he told me.Coho looks to maintain its Walnut Hills headquarters and plans to increase headcount at the site. The combined company employs around 70 with additional offices in Chicago,Greater New York City, Dallas and London.
Sean Bisceglia, CEO of Product Ventures Holdings, a private investor group that acquiredProduct Ventures in July 2024, said COHO fills a void. Product Ventures specializes in packaging structure design for brands like Planters, Oui and Dial.expandCOHO can help bring that packaging to life for PV clients.“Product Ventures is very engineering oriented – what materials might be used and the structure of the packaging,” Bisceglia said. “Once we bought (the company), we realized clients also needed the type of work COHO does around brand packaging. What the brand is, what the packaging looks like to the personality, so it pops off the shelf, because that’s the moment of truth for consumers.”Shapiro founded COHO in 2002 after working for two of the top branding agencies in the country. He relocated from Chicago to Cincinnati to be in closer proximity to Procter &Gamble, one of the largest consumer packaged goods companies in the world. COHO, itself, has worked with a variety of CPG clients, from Fortune 100 firms to startups.
Locally, that includes likes of Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment, which underwent a visual rebrand in 2022; and Erlanger-based Kirk’s Soap, a 186-year-old soap company.Since the beginning, Shapiro said the firm’s focus has been upstream: “It’s about forming great strategies and then take those strategies and translating them into the right design choices,” Shapiro said. “We’re more data driven in terms of the brand itself, not just the vehicle for the brand, like the packaging.”At its peak, COHO employed 50. This year, it ranked as the region’s 14th-largest advertising and marketing firm with 27 local team members.Shapiro said COHO will be able to use PV’s experience and expertise to grow.
He said COHO maintains its independent status – in recent years, many agencies have sold to global holding companies or private equity.“We were looking for a way to scale, and it’s really counter to where the rest of the industry is going,” he said. “We were always going head-to-head against these really large companies, but all of those companies had shifted and downsized. They lost their moreend-to-end services approach. Nobody’s really doing that now.”Product Ventures Holdings is backed by a group of veteran CPG leaders and advisers. Its acquisition of Product Ventures, founded in 1994, last year was the “first step” in thegroup’s goal to “develop a full-scale, idea-to-shelf packaging solution,” it said in a 2024release.Product Ventures, itself, uses design, engineering and consumer insights to test and create packaging – plastic, fiber or cardboard structures that are both practical and can stand out on store shelves, but are also sustainable and cost effective.
Bisceglia said the latter points are currently massive industry trends – at a macro level, given tariffs and regulations in states like California, Maine and Illinois to reduce single-use plastics. As a combined firm, he said PV and COHO are well positioned.“We’ve been doing this for 25-plus years. All of a sudden, in the last four months, it’s become super relevant, mainstream, and it’s exciting for us,” he said. “As long as we’re the solution to help them (our clients), we’re in a really good spot.”Bisceglia said COHO’s leadership, including Shapiro, Greg Zimmer, partner and chief client and strategy officer; Ronald de Vlam, partner and chief innovation officer; and Julie Knight, partner and chief financial officer, will run the combined company as a team.Shapiro said that was an important part of the deal. “We wanted to make sure that as a management team, we integrated and that we were not just be relegated,” he said.
Bisceglia said the firm is on track to grow revenue 55% year-over-year in 2025 – as it adds headcount, he expects PV&Coho to largely hire in Cincinnati and across the Midwest.“If management sits in Cincinnati, it’s just natural that as we expand and hire against that business, it would be in Cincinnati,” he said.In terms of the rebrand, COHO is handling that process in-house, and the company is planning for an unveiling around mid-June.
Bisceglia said a name has been selected but declined to disclose it. Not only does it haveto represent COHO and PV, it needs to fit for other agencies that end up under the ProductVentures Holdings umbrella.“We’re going to still acquire companies,” Bisceglia said. “Our main focus is to grow. Wewant a name that will allow us to integrate and bring together other companies as well.”
