Online stock photography agency
Fotolia has acquired
Wilogo.com, a thriving community for design crowdsourcing. The community, founded in 2006, has been connecting companies in need of design work with a community of people willing to take on the job. Wilogo positions itself as a full service crowdsourced design community able to accommodate most marketing and branding requirements of client companies. Designers who participate have expertise in both print and web design.
Since 2006 Wilogo has paid out almost $1.5 million to designers for 2004 contests. On average 169 designers participate on a project. Currently there are 61 open projects. With this acquisition, Fotolia targets a market that has been drawing a lot of attention in the past years, with strong players such as
99designs or
CrowdSpring. http://www.crowdspring.com/
“Both Fotolia and Wilogo are pioneers in the democratization of graphic design on the Internet. We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of photographers sell images at affordable prices to millions of business owners and graphic designers,” said Fotolia CEO Oleg Tscheltzoff. Wilogo goes a step further by helping business owners launch their businesses with the look of an amazing brand on a bootstrap budget.”
The Wilogo business model requires businesses to pay between $150 and about $900, depending on the design work they need, to launch a design contest within the community. As in all crowdsourcing business models, community members submit design samples, the company organizing the contest picking one winner.
Fotolia seems to have chosen a great community to invest in, considering Wilogo’s client roster.
“Response from our customers, as well as our design community has been amazing. We’ve served clients as big as L’Oréal and Danone, as well as Internet startups like Seesmic”, says Wilogo CEO Jérôme Bazin. “They’re constantly telling us that we have the best solution for their branding needs.”
Fotolia’s acquisition shows a plan to expand in the graphics world, adding design services to the images, graphics and HD videos the website is already selling to over 3 million users. As a plus, both companies have experience in working with multilingual websites, four for Wilogo and 12 for Fotolia.