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Vistaprint deepens design expertise – acquires 99 designs

Thursday 08. October 2020 - Vistaprint, marketing partner to millions of small businesses around the world, today announced its merger with 99designs, a worldwide creative platform that makes it easy for graphic designers and consumers to collaborate and create designs. 99designs was acquired by Cimpress, Vistaprints parent company, and will be managed both as part of Vistaprint and as a separate brand.

“The driving force behind Vistaprint and 99designs is our shared passion for helping small businesses,” said Robert Keane, founder and CEO of Cimpress and Vistaprint. “We know how important great design is to entrepreneurs for their success. 99designs and Vistaprint share the same values and vision. This makes them trusted partners of entrepreneurs and designers and lays the foundation for something bigger and more valuable than either of our teams could create on their own.
The combination of Vistaprint’s large 99designs network of freelance graphic designers and its more than 20 million customers will create a global platform that will make it easy for small businesses to get professional design services and marketing products in one place. And it will give the freelance designers in the 99designs network the opportunity to work for Vistaprint customers.
Patrick Llewellyn, CEO of 99designs, said: “In a year when the whole world has had to collaborate online, 99designs’ mission to foster creativity and create opportunities for people around the world has never been more important. For over a decade, we have been enabling creative collaboration through digital means and have seen first hand how this drives the success of small business owners and designers. Vistaprint’s belief and investment in our team and technology demonstrates the enormous potential that lies within human creativity as well as the impact that professional design can have on a small business.
With more than 20 million customers worldwide, Vistaprint offers a wide variety of customisable design templates for your marketing and promotional materials. In recent years, Vistaprint’s design services have grown to include the ability to create graphic layouts in real time. This service has become very popular with small businesses that turn to Vistaprint’s customer service team for everything from custom banner design to flyers and business cards. During the Corona Pandemic, many customers chose Vistaprint’s design services to quickly and easily create personalised masks for their mouths and noses. With the acquisition of 99designs, Vistaprint will expand its offerings to meet additional customer needs.
“The 99designs professional design community is a vital element in Vistaprint’s business development in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Our customers in German-speaking countries also appreciate the ability to get marketing materials, design and digital services from one source,” said Florian Baumgartner, Vistaprint’s international business manager. “Our goal is to be a partner to our customers every step of the way as they grow and develop their business.
Patrick Llewellyn will report to Robert Keane and will continue to lead 99designs’ business. And the large community of freelance graphic designers will be available to customers of both 99designs and Vistaprint. Vistaprint plans to continue to invest to expand the 99designs team and to continue to rapidly develop the technology and the wide range of design services Vistaprint offers.