The ‘world’s largest’ graphic design company, 99designs has scaled rapidly since its launch in 2008, growing from a Melbourne-based start-up to a $35m-backed internationally-recognised company with headquarters in Silicon Valley and offices spread across the world. We spoke to Niall O’Loughlin, UK manager at 99designs to find out more about the company and pick up some tips on starting and growing a business in the UK.
How did the company start?
The company actually originated from website called Sitepoint.com, which was a how-to site for people to learn about design and development. With a large community of designers and developers active within this community, it was here that the business model was born.
The designers were playing a game for fun they called Photoshop Tennis, where one designer would put up a fictional brief and others would provide their own ideas and concepts for the design. We noticed an interaction within the community whereby a designer once asked the community to come up with a logo for his website client. The designers within the community competed for this logo and it ended with one winning designer getting paid. It was this natural interaction on our community that our founders built a business model around.
What was the transformation like from Australian start up to global leader?
It’s been a crazy journey for everyone at 99designs, but in particular our founding team members. The company was originally spun out in February 2008 and our founders spent the next three years building the business as a bootstrapped company. There wasn’t a huge level of venture capital for start ups in Australia at the time so they decided instead to build the business on the cash flow we could create.
For the first number of years, the company spent almost nothing on marketing, and instead focussed on hiring developers and support staff when we could afford it. Our core focus then and to this day is to deliver a good-value proposition to our community. We were lucky that we captured the attention of a lot of start-up entrepreneurs, particularly in Silicon Valley, who were also our first customers. As tech early adopters like to talk, so we were able to grow strongly on word of mouth and before long we had interest from US venture capital.
How does the relationship between 99designs and an early stage or small business play out?
Typically, we give a business a branding refresh that allows them to take their new business identity to the masses. We provide business owners with crowdsourced graphic design which is fast, affordable interactive and creative. A large chunk of our customers are early stage companies employing between one and five employees. This is great as we are positioned in exactly the right place to make the biggest impact for businesses as they launch or refresh their brand identity. With over 500,000 businesses launching in the UK this year, we feel we are positioned in a great place to assist these businesses in reaching success in a very competitive landscape.
What should a UK business owner do if they are thinking about re-branding their business?
It’s really important that before you undertake any rebranding exercise that you understand how your brand is being perceived by your current customers and also potential future customers. You can use relatively cheap surveying tools, do a quick survey of potential customers and see how they perceive your brand, you can do the same with your current customers and determine if you have a brand issue and, if you do, what you need to do to address that.
Sometimes it can be as simple as cleaning up your Logo design, a cleaner font type perhaps, removing shadowing or looking at a new colour palette to represent your brand in a different way and perhaps move the target segment a little bit one way up or down depending on what you’re trying to achieve.
Is branding the be-all and end-all for a small business?
Businesses should be wary not to overthink their branding. What’s most important is how you run your business and the integrity in which you deliver your service or products. Your brand will help represent that and communicate but it’s all about the service you deliver. Airbnb is a classic example, their last mark was something they threw together quickly. They still built a really big business on the back of it as people really identified with the service they provided. They have been through an extensive rebranding process and ultimately they’ve done a good job.
While it’s more about the core business more than the brand, a well thought out branding helps you get out there and it’s important to have something when you start. That’s one of the things we do well, we can get a small business up and running very quickly with quality graphic design. I strongly encourage small business owners to get started, get testing, get talking to customers and understand who it is you’re trying to address.
What’s next for 99designs?
As a business and a community, we are constantly looking at the ways we can better provide end-to-end solutions for our customers. We are always evolving in our marketplace to better serve our customers and community, so you can expect more big things from 99designs in the near future.