Longtime friends—and collegial competitors—Dominic Gardiner and Ed Galton are finally working for the same company, although how they wound up in their current situation certainly isn’t how the two envisioned coming together. 

Until recently, Gardiner was CEO of Jetpack Distribution, the London-based company he founded in 2014. Now, he’s the managing director of CAKE Distribution, working under CAKE Group CEO Galton. 

“Jetpack went into financial difficulties, and Dom and I did our best to find the best solution that we could for a bad situation,” says Galton. 

On August 15, Jetpack shut down operations, and a voluntary liquidator was appointed on August 21. In its UK government filings, the company reported that it owed creditors £549,829 pounds (approximately US$725,000). 

“The big picture is that the company had grown throughout the pandemic and had a lot of success during that period. And then, into 2022 and 2023, sales were declining,” explains Gardiner. “The company was not profitable during that period. That’s when we started to look for alternative routes out of the slowdown in the marketplace.” 

While this path didn’t materialize in time to save the company, Gardiner and Galton managed to revive at least some aspects of Jetpack. 

“We bought the naming rights of the business. We bought all the data. We bought all of the information that comes with the sales organization. But what that meant was we had to go back and re-sign all of Dom’s clients to new contracts, which is what we’ve done,” says Galton.

Acquiring Jetpack’s distribution catalogue essentially doubled the volume of content that CAKE is able to offer to clients, and Galton estimates the company now has roughly 3,200 half hours on hand. Jetpack was the distributor for shows such as Clangers (104 x 11 minutes), Dennis & Gnasher: Unleashed! (104 x 11 minutes) and Kitty is not a Cat (130 x 11 minutes). Those shows have joined the CAKE stable, which is home to Angry Birds (a series and multiple one-shots), Space Chickens in Space (52 x 11 minutes) and the cartoon featured in the image above: Mush-Mush & the Mushables (96 x 11 minutes and four x 22 minutes). 

What CAKE didn’t acquire was the majority of Jetpack’s staff. Seven employees were listed on the company’s winding-up filing. Besides Gardiner, only one other Jetpacker—sales manager Toby Jones—will join CAKE. He has been brought in as senior manager of sales and will be responsible for managing a few territories, working alongside veteran sales director Julien Farcat. Other CAKE sales team members are expected to continue in their current roles. 

In his new position, Gardiner will oversee both the distribution business (including acquiring new content) and the sales and marketing team. He has also been given the responsibility of maintaining relationships with producers and ensuring a proper business flow that supports the needs of the company’s clients. While he is looking forward to supporting and marketing CAKE’s own productions, he still wants to hear from producers, writers, creatives and “anybody else who’s producing content for kids & families”.

Check out Kidscreen’s Q4 issue (which will be available at MIPCOM) to read more from Galton and Gardiner, including a discussion about CAKE’s plans for the future.