99designs Surges to Record Growth

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- 99designs, the world's largest marketplace for graphic design, today announced that it has reached a new milestone — the company has paid out $80 million to its community of graphic designers and is on track to hit $160 million by the end of 2015.

Fueling this activity is the company's aggressive global and product line expansion. 99designs now offers design services in nine languages and connects clients and designers from 196 countries. Boasting a commanding lead as the largest design community in the world, the platform supports 850,000 designers and expects to reach one million early next year.

"During the last two years we've been thrilled to see our investment in international markets pay off with some terrific growth," said Patrick Llewellyn, CEO of 99designs. "These numbers strengthen our desire to continue delivering the best solutions for businesses of all sizes and unmatched opportunities for designers."

Llewellyn notes that Germany is a great example of a market that has performed well since localization - with over 80% average annual growth since localizing two years ago. "And we're equally happy to note that our '1-to-1 Projects' product, an extension of our service making it easy for businesses to work directly with their favorite designers, has seen 148% average annual growth over that same timeframe."

99designs continues to see substantial growth in the types of businesses it services, including agencies and enterprises, and has extended its reach to professionals in the real estate, medical, and technology verticals. And, its design community is showing its breadth of skill by excelling in fast growing categories, such as website, mobile app, and t-shirt design.

"99designs has been right there with us from the beginning, from designing our very first logo which was featured when we pitched our business on ABC's Shark Tank, to recently redesigning our entire company website," said Stephan Aarstol, Founder of Tower Paddle Boards. "We've already seen a big boost in conversion rates on our website. As our business keeps growing, we are confident in 99designs to meet any of our design needs, big and small."

99designs has also grown its internal workforce through several strategic executive hires in 2014, including Chief Marketing Officer Pamela Webber, who heads up the global marketing team and David Kaplan, who joins as Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary. The company now employs more than 100 people in its offices in San Francisco, Melbourne, Berlin and Rio de Janeiro.  

About 99designs

99designs, the world's largest graphic design marketplace, has helped over 225,000 businesses access quality design at an affordable price. 99designs pioneered crowdsourced design contests, where businesses receive a wide variety of design concepts and choose their favorite, and expanded to provide services for customers to work with individual designers, purchase design templates from the Ready-made logo store, or get small tasks done within an hour through Swiftly. With more than 850,000 designers from 196 countries around the world, 99designs' suite of services helps businesses succeed through great design created by a robust community of talented graphic designers. 99designs is backed by Accel Partners.

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SOURCE 99designs