Nice Story: Hometown Friends And Families Whose Investments Got Reach Media Started See Payoff In Poppulo M&A Deal

March 5, 2025 by Dave Haynes

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper has a nice story up going into the deal announced yesterday that saw Poppulo acquire the company REACH Media Network, going into its small town Northern Minnesota origin story.

The company was founded some 20 years ago by Darren Wercinski and Marc Kline, who was bought out and now handles sales for another Twin Cities company, Screenfeed. The two were able to get started because of friends and family investments – $10K contributions put in 20 years ago, mostly by mining families from the Iron Range town where Wercinski grew up and was a local hockey star.

From the story …

When he (Wercinski) and Marc Kline, a Best Buy colleague, decided they wanted to strike out on their own, the two kicked around a bunch of ideas. But Wercinski’s experience as a rink rat was how they settled on Reach Media Network.

He knew ice arenas needed a way to get information out to athletes, coaches and parents. The pair figured they could use media screens that had directions, schedules and community information. As a bonus, Reach could sell ads and split the revenue.

It was classic captive audience marketing. Visitors to the centers saw the ads as they had to watch the screens for schedules and assignments.

The Eden Prairie company’s first client was the Super Rink in Blaine. Others followed suit.

“Back then, if one ice arena had something cool. The rest of them wanted to get something cool,” Wercinski said.

The company soon realized that outside of Minnesota communities didn’t spend a lot on ice arenas. So Reach began expanding the screens to corporate and education campuses as well as to large fitness and restaurant chains.

That model worked well for a while as Reach built up a nationwide ad sales team.

Over time, though, it became harder and harder for sales reps to sell enough ads to support all the screens deployed.

Wercinski and Kline pivoted from an advertising sales company to a SaaS (software as a service) vendor. In other words, Reach now sells the software for the screens on a subscription basis and clients can sell their own ads.

Wercinski can’t provide details, but says the $10K acts of faith his friends and family members put in have now paid off handsomely.

“Terms of the Poppulo deal were not disclosed, but Wercinski said his co-founder and all the investors had a much better return than if they had invested in an S&P 500 index fund.”