DesignCrowd Acquires Stock Logo Website Brandstack and Launches BrandCrowd

DesignCrowd – an online ‘crowdsourcing’ marketplace that in November 2011 received $3M of investment from Starfish Ventures–has announced the acquisition of Brandstack.com, a leading online marketplace ofpremium, ready-made brands and logos. Following the acquisition, DesignCrowd launched BrandCrowd.com to combine the Brandstack service with the existing DesignCrowd community.

The acquisition of Brandstack and the launch of BrandCrowd will further reinforce DesignCrowd’s leadership in crowdsourced graphic design services. BrandCrowd.com will providepremium ready-made logos and brands(from Business Logos to Church Logos) created by 50,000 designers from around the world.

The Brandstack acquisition combined with the DesignCrowd site will provide BrandCrowd with immediate market leadership in the stock logo design market. Alec Lynch, DesignCrowd’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, said, “Brandstack was different to other ready-made logo marketplaces - it's a premium offering with beautiful designs. Acquiring Brandstack gives us three things: new, talented designers; a ready-made logo offering; and market leadership. That's why we bought it. Brandstack was the best ready-made logo marketplace. Now, BrandCrowd will be both the best and the biggest.”

DesignCrowd will unlock the value of Brandstack by integrating it with DesignCrowd via the new website BrandCrowd. In the short term, the company has combined the communitiesand now has 100,000 users across the two sites. Designers can work across both websites and shortly the company integrate the sites more closely and introduce some new innovations.

Explaining Brandstack’s strategic value to DesignCrowd, Lynch said, “Creative ideas are rare assets - they should not go to waste - and Brandstack's model ensures they don't. It will allow us to unlock the value of our 500,000 unused designs submitted on DesignCrowd. This meansevery creative idea or design uploaded to DesignCrowd can lead to cash in the bank for its creator”.

Wes Wilson, Brandstack's founder, said "Alec, Adam and the rest of the DesignCrowd team have incredible passion for the design community and I'm glad Brandstack can play a part in their plans to build on it. I'm looking forward to seeing Brandstack thrive under their vision, ambition, and resources. It's a definite win for graphic designers around the world."

As an immediate gesture of goodwill, DesignCrowd has repaid Brandstack designers who are owed payment for sold logo designs and offering a $20 discount coupon for any stock logoon BrandCrowd.

About Brandstack

Founded by Wes Wilson and launched in April 2008, Brandstack is an online logo marketplace providing premium, ready-made agency quality brands and logos for sale to buyers around the world. Brandstack lets designers create their own studios and sell design work to their peers or directly to buyers. Brandstack was built to reinvent how graphic designers reach their customers and how they work, share, and collaborate with each other. In 2011, DesignCrowd completed an acquisition of Brandstack and Brandstack has now been re-launched as BrandCrowd.

About DesignCrowd

Founded by Alec Lynch and launched in January 2008, DesignCrowd is a leading online crowdsourcing service. DesignCrowd gives buyers of design services access to a 'virtual team' of over 60,000 designers and their studios from around the world (via a process called crowdsourcing). Buyers gain access to high quality international design talent available, at a low cost. At DesignCrowd, every designer can get paid and buyers browse top graphic designers and hand-pick their favourites.