Hello 99designs community!
Today is a big day for 99designs. We’re excited to announce our first ever acquisition and with it our new European headquarters!
Berlin-based 12designer the leading creative design marketplace in Germany, is now part of the 99designs family. The acquisition is an important step forward in our mission to deliver the best platform for graphic design services in the world.
99designs CEO Patrick Llewellyn with 12designer CEO Eva Missling Berlin
Germany is 99design’s top non-English language market and, along with its European neighbors, one of our fastest growing. 12designer and 99designs operate with similar design contest models. However, 99designs connects businesses and designers in more than 160 countries through a truly global English-language platform, while 12designer is focused on providing services to European clients and designers in German, Spanish, French, Italian and English.
The skilled 12designer team, the new staffers we plan to bring on board in Berlin, and the talented 12designer community of more than 22,000 creative design professionals, will help 99designs localize our services for our European customers and deliver more opportunity for all in the months ahead.
We hope you’ll join us in welcoming 12designer Founder and CEO Eva Missling and her wonderful team to 99designs. I’m in Berlin celebrating with them right now. Meanwhile, our teams in San Francisco and Melbourne have been celebrating, too – check out the video below for a glimpse of just how excited we all are.
Cheers,
Patrick Llewellyn, CEO 99designs
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I am *very* curious to see where that leads.
Give a big hug to Nadine & Eva – I used to be quite active on 12D, before starting to do most of my work on 99D. Bummer that you are keeping your headquarters in Berlin, though… Hamburg rocks, too!
Congratulations!!!
That is a very big step. I haven’t been so active on that platform due to the language barrier – predominantly Deutsche – hoping to see it growing in a more international manner
Any thoughts or systems in place to prevent the other copy cats and having to buy them out?
Cool
I absolutely hate the 99designs concept and would wash dishes before I would enter one of your “contests” aka working for much less then minimum wage. I sincerely hope your European endeavours fail miserably.
I’m really sorry to hear you feel that way, Milla. 99designs pays out more than $1.5 million each month to our designer community, and we are proud of this. We work hard to support our designers and increase their opportunities to improve their skills, earn money and source new clients – this has been the goal since our launch in 2008. Our expansion in Europe is aligned with this goal, and also benefits our customers.
Here are a couple articles/blog posts that discuss the experiences of designers on our site:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2012/05/08/99designs-from-the-top-designers-perspectives
http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/get-over-it-haters-99designs-has-tipped/
Selamat Patrick Llewellyn