The Purple Guys Acquires Fellow MSP Technology Pointe

‘Our acquisitions don’t have to be the largest MSPs. But we need to see that clients continue working with them and wouldn’t go anywhere else. Corporate culture is not easy to fit in, but it’s top of our list as we look for companies to bring into The Purple Guys fold,’ says The Purple Guys CEO Kevin Cook.

The Purple Guys has acquired fellow MSP Technology Pointe in a move that gives it an opportunity to stretch its market reach westward and unveiled plans to make another two to three acquisitions this year.

The Purple Guys closed the acquisition of Technology Pointe in late December, but waited nearly a month to publicly unveil the purchase to give its people time to react to the news, said Kevin Cook (pictured), CEO of Shreveport, La.-based The Purple Guys.

Austin, Texas-based Technology Pointe is The Purple Guys’ fourth acquisition since the company in its present form was founded in January 2020 when two private equity companies, Kian Capital and Park South Ventures, purchased the majority of Enterprise Computing Services, which Cook founded in 1997.

[Related: Thinking Of Buying Or Selling An MSP? Here Are 6 Tips From Experts]

Technology Pointe and its 20 employees give The Purple Guys a quick entry into the Texas market, Cook told CRN.

“Texas is such a large market,” he said. “Our headquarters in Shreveport is just 15 minutes away from the Texas state line. We just can’t ignore that market.”

Technology Pointe, like all of The Purple Guys’ acquisitions to date, is a best-in-class MSP, Cook said.

“Our acquisitions don’t have to be the largest MSPs,” he said. “But we need to see that clients continue working with them and wouldn’t go anywhere else. Corporate culture is not easy to fit in, but it’s top of our list as we look for companies to bring into The Purple Guys fold.”

Cook declined to discuss how much his company paid for Technology Pointe.

Looking ahead, The Purple Guys expects to do two to three more acquisitions in 2022, assuming it finds the right opportunities, Cook said.

“There are a lot of good MSPs in the country where their owners are looking for change,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to retire. And providing technologies like security is hard for smaller MSPs. We’re doing this at scale. And with acquisitions, we get the opportunity to find talent.”

Cook said he is not sure how far outside the southeastern U.S. The Purple Guys will expand.

“We see ourselves as a regional player,” he said. “We like the Southeast a lot. There’s room to find good companies in a geography that’s a fit for us.”

Cook described how the MSP went on to brand itself The Purple Guys.

At the time the investors acquired the majority of Enterprise Computing Services, it made its own acquisition, that of New Orleans-based My IT, Cook said. Then, in February 2021, the company acquired The Purple Guys, which was based in Kansas City, Kan.

At that time, Cook said, he was working on how to brand his company. He said it is difficult to find a brand with a name everybody could agree with and that was easy to remember.

“Then we bought The Purple Guys,” he said. “We told everyone to stop what they were doing. Here was a brand you might love or hate. Clients had given the company its name from the purple everything all the employees wore, calling those employees the ‘purple guys.’ It was an interesting name and one that was hard to forget. I said, ‘I’m no genius here, but I think we should rebrand ourselves as The Purple Guys.’”