Rubix Brand Guidelines: Brammer of Leeds and IPH of Lyon, Merged by Advent in 2017

A Leeds distributor and a Lyon group.

Rubix is a young name on two older businesses. The older one is Brammer, which Drives & Controls reported in 2017 was established in Leeds in 1920 and grew through a mix of organic growth and acquisitions; in 2006 it combined its businesses under the Brammer brand, and by 2016 it had a strong presence in the UK, German, French, Spanish and Benelux markets, with its core strengths in bearings and power transmission. In 2011 it merged its British operation with Buck & Hickman, a supplier of tools, to form Brammer Buck & Hickman.

The second root is IPH, which the same magazine says was established in 1987 in Lyon, France, and grew largely through acquisitions. In May 2017 Drives & Controls listed its distribution networks as including Zitec in Germany, Orexad in France, Biesheuvel in the Netherlands and Minetti in Italy, with further operations in Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland and Romania, and some products sold under its own Giss brand. The Paris-based investor PAI Partners had bought IPH from Investcorp in 2013, the magazine said.

The two were joined by the private equity firm Advent International. Advent completed its purchase of Brammer in February 2017, taking the company private from the London Stock Exchange after a profit warning the year before, Drives & Controls reported. It then negotiated with PAI to buy IPH, completing that deal on 15 September 2017, and merged the two as IPH-Brammer, headquartered in London, with more than 8,000 employees in 23 European countries. The former head of IPH became chief executive of the merged business, and the former head of Brammer its chief operating officer.

A new name in June 2018.

The combined group took the name Rubix on 26 June 2018. Drives & Controls called it Europe’s largest supplier of industrial maintenance, repair and overhaul products and services, operating from more than 650 locations across 23 countries and distributing bearings, transmission and automation, fluid power, machining, assembly and tool products under local brands such as Giner, Minetti, Orexad and Zitec. It had more than 8,000 employees and more than 220,000 customers, the magazine said, and its chief executive at the time described it as “a new company,” adding that the European market for industrial products distribution was “very fragmented.”

The name came with a new look in Britain. To tie in with the rebrand, Brammer Buck & Hickman unveiled a new corporate identity that incorporated the Rubix name into its logo, and its chief executive said the name “signifies problem solving,” the magazine reported. The same year Rubix was ranked 27th in the Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100, a ranking of Britain’s largest private companies by sales.

The British name went in 2022. On 1 September 2022 Drives & Controls reported that Brammer Buck & Hickman, with more than 1,100 employees at more than 40 branches, was changing its name to Rubix, with the brand appearing on branches, on-site customer stores, technical centres and the national distribution centre in Wolverhampton. The head of the UK business called it “a nostalgic time” for a brand with more than 100 years of history.

Rubix has kept buying. English Wikipedia lists dozens of subsidiaries across Europe, and Drives & Controls has reported the purchases of Matara, Knowlton & Newman and, in 2023, Gapp Automation in Britain. Advent says the group has made more than 70 acquisitions.

Design and documentation.

Industrial and electronics distributors mostly sell products made by other companies, so their identities are built less on objects than on names, ranges, branches and service. The figures they publish are counts: Genuine Parts Company said in February 2026 that its Motion business offers more than 10 million SKUs, and Motion Asia Pacific says it draws on more than 3,000 suppliers.

The catalogue remains the core of that presentation, now spread across print, websites and electronic ordering. Cromwell’s careers site describes customers reaching the company through its product catalogue, its website and electronic data interchange, as well as through branches and sales teams, so the same range has to read clearly on a page, on a screen and inside a purchasing system.

The branch and the vending machine carry the name into the field. GPC’s company overview counts about 720 Motion branches and service centres across North America and Australasia, while East Midlands Business Link reported in January 2026 that Cromwell manages on-site vending machines inside large customer facilities. In both cases the brand sits on a fascia, a counter or a cabinet in someone else’s workplace.

Ownership shapes the corporate pages. Cromwell supplies branded and own-brand tools, the same publication reported, and it now appears on the investment pages of its private equity owner, Aurelius; Motion appears on GPC’s “Our Companies” page beside NAPA. Names are often simplified along the way: Motion Industries announced a rebrand as simply Motion in January 2021, English Wikipedia says. This guide sets out who founded each distributor, who owns it and how it describes its own range, and attributes each figure to the source that gives it.

ERIKS UK & Ireland and new minority investors.

The biggest recent step came in Britain. In March 2025 Rubix agreed to buy ERIKS UK & Ireland, the flow-products distributor that sold hoses, valves, seals and gaskets with customisation and repair services, Drives & Controls reported; Rubix said the deal would make its UK, Ireland and Iceland region its second-largest. Advent announced the closing on 3 November 2025.

The ownership changed at the same time. Advent said a group led by Neuberger Berman Private Markets had acquired a minority shareholding in Rubix, with Adams Street Partners, LGT Capital Partners, J. Safra Sarasin Asset Management and funds managed by BlackRock also investing, and that Advent remains the majority shareholder. In November 2025 Drives & Controls put the group at more than 750 locations in 22 countries, with 9,000 people.

Alongside the brands it distributes, Rubix has its own ranges. English Wikipedia names five exclusive brands, among them Cutline rotary cutting tools, Mecaline power transmission products, Roebuck hand tools and Spartex industrial essentials. Where those products are made is not stated in the sources used here. Its chairman, according to Advent, is Johan Sleebus, formerly chairman and chief executive of ERIKS.

Rubix’s identity sits on top of many older local names: Orexad in France, Zitec in Germany and Minetti in Italy were all listed among its brands in 2018, while in Britain the century-old Brammer name has given way to the group name. The palette in this guide is our own interpretation, not an official specification.

For a design guide, Rubix shows how a private equity roll-up can choose a short invented name and then move it, country by country, onto older trading brands. Compare ERIKS, whose UK and Irish business Rubix bought, and RS Group, another British distributor of industrial parts. For this guide we use an ink blue and a coral with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Rubix’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.