When design marketplace Brandstack was shuttered last month (with the founder blaming credit card fraud), we figured that was the end of the story. Little did I know things were about to go all M. Night Shyamalan with a last minute plot twist.
DesignCrowd, an Australian design crowdsourcing platform that raised $3 million last month, has just announced that they’ve acquired Brandstack and will integrate it into their service (essentially rescuing Brandstack from the deadpool.)
DesignCrowd has just relaunched the product as BrandCrowd, with each leg of the company offering a slightly different service. With DesignCrowd, anyone looking for a design (be it a logo, web layout, business cards, whatever) can create a project request and set a budget while designers make bids and pitch their work. With BrandCrowd, designers offer up their pre-made designs (often brands paired with domain names) for pre-set prices. Same end goal (designers sell, users get designs), differing approaches. In the new year, DesignCrowd says they plan to integrate the two services more closely.
Neither company is revealing the exact details of the acquisition, but I’m hearing that the final price is somewhere in the six-figure range. That may not be mansion and yacht money, but it’s a whole lot better than closing the doors and walking away empty handed.
Making the news even better: in what they call an “immediate gesture of goodwill”, DesignCrowd is repaying all of the Brandstack designers who went unpaid when the site was suddenly and unexpectedly shut down. It’s a happy ending for everyone!
Brandstack lets designers create their own studios and sell design work to their peers or to directly consumers. Brandstack was built to reinvent how graphic designers reach their customers and how they work, share, and collaborate with each other. In December 2011, Brandstack was acquired by DesignCrowd, an online ‘crowdsourcing’ marketplace.
DesignCrowd (formerly DesignBay) is an online marketplace for logo, website, print and graphic design services by providing access to freelance graphic designers and design studios around the world. DesignCrowd gives you access to a ‘virtual team’ of 61,393 designers from around the world (via a process called crowdsourcing) - helping you to tap into the very best international design talent available, at a low cost. Post a project on DesignCrowd and watch designs pour in from around the world...
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
