In 2016, no one would have blamed Kasey Grelle if she walked away from her job at digital media company Quillt.
On June 4, 2016, Grelle’s father passed away from pancreatic cancer. Later that month, June 20, she lost her mother to ovarian cancer. Six months later, her husband was severely injured when struck by a car. A month after that, Grelle had a baby.
In addition, she became CEO of Quillt (formerly Gateway Blend) that same year.
Entrepreneurs often say they've developed companies or business models out of a personal need or problem. In Grelle's case, it was personal tragedy that was the catalyst for a transformation of Quillt, which operates digital media brands and last month rebranded to its current name. Grelle said her experiences in 2016 ignited the decision to implement a strategy targeting specific audiences rather than just page views.
“For me, I was spending a lot of time running this company from a hospital room and realized I wanted to be creating content, or creating something, that made a lot of a difference. That was the genesis for the start of this transformation,” Grelle said.
With Grelle at the helm, Quillt developed media properties designed for niche audiences, particularly those involving seniors.
“Quillt itself is a patchwork of media brands, but I think the unifying thread is that all of the brands that we have within our portfolio now all serve the same niche in that 50-plus audience,” Grelle said.
The company operates three different brands, including:
- Seniors Matter, which publishes content focused on senior caregiving;
- Travel Awaits, a travel site targeting the 50-plus audience; and
- Gossip Cop, a site that fact-checks entertainment reporting.
The focus on niche audiences led Quillt to retool its portfolio and even part ways with its biggest brand. The company in October 2020 sold its popular entertainment site CinemaBlend to United Kingdom-based media company Future plc. CinemaBlend had 19.4 million unique visitors in the first half of 2020, up 118% year over year. The sale came as Grelle says Quillt focused on the impact of its content rather than its reach.
“We used to be an organization that focused on creating content that reached the maximum amount of people, but we really didn’t care as much about the engagement or what that content meant for them. That really shifted for us in 2016,” she said.
Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Grelle came to St. Louis as an undergraduate student at Washington University. She began her career in journalism, which included working several years as a reporter at KSDK before transitioning to the venture capital industry. Grelle joined St. Louis-based Cultivation Capital in its infancy, working as director of investor relations and then as a principal of the firm.
“At Cultivation, I saw a lot of deals and really got into the weeds on looking at deals, but I wanted to get my hands dirty from an operations perspective.”
That itch led Grelle to Quillt, where she started in 2015 in an executive role focused on M&A. She joined Quillt, which was spun out Answers Corp. in 2014, as it charted fast growth. But the company soon faced challenges, laying off a portion of its workforce in 2016. And as CEO, Grelle inherited a company with $40 million in debt.
“Unfortunately, the debt was a player at the table every single time we went into strategic planning and thinking,” Grelle said.
Grelle said Quillt, which is owned by St. Louis investor Tom Hillman, paid off its debt last year. That milestone was “completely liberating,” she said. It’s also positioned the company for growth, which could come through M&A or internal investment.
“My preference is always starting with M&A and then seeing if we can supercharge (the site) because that’s been so successful for us. But I think now we have the financial freedom to do both.”
Today, Quillt has 45 employees. It has $20 million in annual revenue, down significantly from its previous years of rapid growth. However, Grelle is confident the company is now set up for longterm success.
“We’re in the strongest place we’ve ever been and we’re focusing on an audience, for whatever reason, that seems to be overlooked by a lot of media and we like it that way. We know that the content that we’re creating matters,” she said.
