2018 CRN Impact Awards: Envato

An Australian company that bills one of its services as “Netflix for designers” is halfway to meeting a self-imposed commitment to return $1 billion to designers by 2020.

Founded in February 2006 by Collis and Cyan Ta'eed, and Jun Rung, Melbourne’s Envato has eight digital marketplaces serving 1.5 million active buyers according to Crunchbase and six million unique accounts and 40 million sales, says the company.

Appealing to a ‘pro-sumer’ market of design creatives who buy and sell content and services on the marketplaces from Wordpress themes to videos and photos, Envato has branched into ‘Elements’, an all-you-can-eat marketplace to accelerate its growth, which it compares to Netflix.

“We provide a platform for digital creatives around the world to earn a living doing what they love by selling items they make, while also helping designers and other customers from all walks of life find the assets they need to make their creative projects a success,” says CEO and chairman Collis Ta'eed, an entrant in the CRN Impact Awards 2018.

“The success of Envato's marketplaces has enabled us to create Envato Elements, a subscription service that's been called the Netflix for designers, providing unlimited downloads of creative assets for a flat monthly fee.

“We have more than 35,000 sellers who have earned more than $500 million.”

Collis Ta’eed says Envato solves the pain point of Balkanised design assets services.

“Prior to Envato, a major challenge for digital creatives and designers was sourcing items for their projects,” he says.

“Customers would browse many different websites or have skills to create from scratch. Envato Market [is] one integrated marketplace, saving time and resources. We refined this with Envato Elements, providing designers a cost-effective subscription service [of] unlimited downloads.”

As an indicator of Elements proposed trajectory, Ta’eed points to the success of Envato’s ThemeForest, a WordPress and website theme market that in 2015 was a top 100 site. While declining to state annual sales, he says most of the company’s sales are from overseas: “The United States a particularly important market for us”.

“Our community is truly global, with customers and authors from more than 100 countries. In 2018, we will take an even bigger step forward with international localisation efforts.”

Last year, Trade Minister Hon Steven Ciobo named Envato 2016 Australian Exporter of the Year.

Envato is a finalist in the 'Exporting Innovation' category in the 2018 CRN Impact Awards. For a list of all finalists and further details on the awards, please head to the CRN Impact Awards hub. The awards take place during the CRN Pipeline conference. You can get more information and purchase tickets here.