Vistaprint to acquire Melbourne start-up 99designs

The deal caps a 12-year journey for Melbourne start-up founder Patrick Llewellyn.

99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn. Source: Supplied.

Melbourne-based start-up 99designs has been acquired by the parent company of printing outfit Vistaprint, Cimpress, capping a 12-year journey for chief executive Patrick Llewellyn who says his company is set to grow by more than 50 per cent under the deal.

Speaking to The Australian Mr Llewellyn said his start-up, which offers an online platform for graphic designers, will remain as a stand-alone brand and will now be able to reach Vistaprint‘s 20 million global customers.

“We are very excited, and it‘s been a fair bit of work in what has been an odd time to be doing a transaction like this,” Mr Llewellyn said in an interview.

“The biggest thing for us is the shared vision, and values. Robert [Keane, Vistaprint CEO] started Vistaprint in 1995 in his bedroom, and 25 years later he‘s still passionate about the future, and he’s poured a significant chunk of his life into this amazingly successful operation that does two and a half-billion dollars in revenue.

“I‘m really excited to be able to work alongside him, and it made it easy. I get a mentor, I get access to this amazing team and access to new customers. It was a relatively easy decision and I’m excited.”

The executive added that 99designs‘ tech infrastructure can be thought of as a kind of Amazon Web Services for creative services, given the company’s API had been integrated with creative marketplaces for the likes of Squarespace, Square and Prezi. It’s paid out more than $US300m to its freelancers to date.

He said Vistaprint would accelerate 99designs‘ product and technology development, and increase its headcount by 50 per cent post-acquisition.

Mr Llewllyn will report to Robert Keane and will continue to lead 99designs, and its community of freelance designers will serve customers of both 99designs and Vistaprint.

“We started in Melbourne, and our core engineering, product and design teams are based in Melbourne,” he said. ”It‘s going to continue to be here, and we’ll continue to grow as a team. We’re a nice little story for the Aussie start-up scene.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“The driving force behind Vistaprint’s future with 99designs is our passion to help small businesses,” Robert Keane, founder and chief executive officer of Cimpress and Vistaprint said in a statement.

“We know how critical great design is for entrepreneurs on their journey. 99designs and Vistaprint have shared values and vision to be a trusted partner to business owners and creators which lay the foundation for something bigger and more valuable than either of our teams could create alone.”

Vistaprint chief marketing officer Ricky Engelberg said, “In order to become a more complete marketing partner to our customers we are augmenting our internal teams with 99designs’ wide-reaching community of talented freelance professional designers who are experts for more sophisticated design projects.

“As businesses grow, the complexity and importance of their design needs also grow. To meet these needs as professionally and seamlessly as possible, we sought a partner that not only brings a scalable network of high-quality talent for design services, but who shares our vision for providing best-in-class solutions to business owners throughout their entrepreneurial journey.”