Two area professional video and audio editing equipment suppliers have joined forces. Milwaukee-based Safe Harbor Computers has acquired the assets of Cudahy-based ADK Media LLC.
The transaction closed early this year for an undisclosed price, said Ryan Persitza, president of Safe Harbor.
Safe Harbor, established in 1989, has been owned by Milwaukee-based International Commerce & Marketing Corp. since 2013. It sells hardware, software and custom work stations to movie studios and other video professionals for use in 3D animation, virtual reality and special effects.
“We built a machine for NASA that interpolated the data on the Mars rover,” Persitza said. “We’ve done a lot of work for a lot of big folks in town here – everybody from Harley to Direct Supply.”
ADK was sold by Scott Chichelli, who founded it in 1998. It makes professional digital audio workstations used to mix and sample music. Among ADK’s clients is record producer D.A. Doman, who has produced singles for major artists including Tyga, Future and Kodak Black.
ADK had three employees, one of whom joined Safe Harbor in the transaction. Safe Harbor had five employees, and has hired one additional full-time and two part-time employees to staff ADK.
Chichelli retained the government sales division of ADK, where he will now focus his efforts, Persitza said. Safe Harbor purchased the ADK branding, customer lists, vendor relationships and two flagship websites: adkproaudio.com and adkvideoediting.com.
Persitza has grown Safe Harbor from $1.6 million to $12 million in revenue over the past six years, he said. And he’s hoping to take a similar approach with ADK, which peaked at $4 million in sales but in 2018 had $900,000 in sales.
“They had an excellent reputation,” Persitza said. “They offer lifetime support with all of their computers. It also opened up an ability for us to get into laptops. And then in addition to having a similar business in selling these peripheral laptops and custom work stations to video folks, they also had a very big niche in pro audio and that was attractive to us.”
