Paxar

Paxar was a supplier of identification and labelling products to apparel manufacturers and retailers — the printed labels, woven labels, tags and barcode systems garments carry through the supply chain. It stopped being an independent company in 2007, when Avery Dennison acquired all of its outstanding shares for $30.50 per share in a transaction valued at about $1.3 billion. Paxar's business continues inside Avery Dennison's retail branding and information solutions operations.

Company Profile

The acquisition was announced on March 22, 2007, after both boards unanimously approved the definitive agreement. Paxar had traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PXR, and its shareholders received cash for a business that supplied many of the world's largest apparel brands and retailers with product identification. The combination joined two of the apparel industry's biggest labelling suppliers, and the Paxar name gradually disappeared from products as its operations were integrated.

For researchers tracing the company, the practical position today is simple: there is no standalone Paxar business to contact. Enquiries about the labelling products Paxar sold belong with Avery Dennison, whose retail branding division serves the same apparel customers. The dated record of Paxar as a listed company is kept in the past tense, because the listed company ceased to exist in 2007.

The range behind the name is printed and woven labels, tags, tickets and barcode identification systems. Its customers are apparel manufacturers and retailers around the world. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Paxar in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Paxar with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Acquired by Avery Dennison in 2007 — no longer an independent company — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

Company summaries of this kind were the working tool of the apparel trade as much as of investors: a buyer, landlord or supplier checking Paxar could see its scale, its headquarters and its own description of its business in a few paragraphs. Those dated descriptions are kept with their dates, because a store count from 2013 or a strategy statement from 2019 is evidence about that year, not about today. The current position is the one given in the snapshot: acquired by avery dennison in 2007.

History in Brief

Paxar's independent life ended with the 2007 Avery Dennison acquisition described above; the March 2007 announcement valued the business at about $1.3 billion, and its labelling operations were absorbed into the buyer.