Designing a template for success
GOLD Coast-based technology firm Desygner is closing in on 10 million registered users for its graphic design software as it seeks to break into the European corporate market.
Last year the company, led by CEO and co-founder Mariana Aguiar, opened an office in Lisbon and currently has 20 staff servicing the continent.
Ms Aguiar, who is from Brazil and speaks Portuguese, said the office was established to serve the northern hemisphere, including the United States.
Desygner was founded by Ms Aguiar, Alex Rich and other professionals, interested in creating graphic design software with thousands of templates, which can easily be tweaked, shared and printed. Its design customisation app has attracted millions of downloads.
Ms Aguiar and Mr Rich first connected in 2012 when Ms Aguiar, a marketing professional from Brazil, joined Mr Rich’s fashion brand SLY Collective from underwear manufacturer aussieBum.
Mr Rich’s business pedigree includes launching shopper dockets in the UK when he was 16.
They say their product, unlike rival Canva, is for the layperson – designed for people who want to design well but have no desire to be designers themselves.
Canva is a multi-billion-dollar design start-up that sells a software-as-service platform for graphic design, enabling people to create print and digital marketing materials.
However, Ms Aguiar said it was targeted at enabling people to learn to design whereas her company is for people who don’t want to be taught to design.
She said this is one of the company’s strengths, particularly when tailoring its services to corporates.
Ms Aguiar said its corporate product puts the management, customisation and distribution of visual content into the hands of staff (albeit within tightly-defined parameters), and not just designers, therefore enabling marketing campaigns to be executed efficiently and quickly.
She gives the example of customer Keller Williams Realty – an American real estate franchise group with hundreds of thousands of associates who all need to produce marketing material. “They use our system to distribute presentable content that anyone can use,” she said. Keller Williams associates and staff work from a selected number of templates that its designers produce and print out their own material.
Ms Aguiar said the company has its eye on opening a US office on the West Coast this year.
A key part of the company’s success, particularly with corporate clients, is its PDF editing tool.
Ms Aguiar said a future focus for the company will be on automation.
She said she also wants a number of services to be free to small-to-medium size enterprises, describing it as a way to clear “roadblocks” particularly for companies that have been going for a couple of years.
“If people spend time on the platform they will spend money eventually,” she said.
“We are not into putting up paywalls.”
The company currently has 48,000 subscribers to its premium service for SMEs and 150,000 paid users for corporates.
A feature it will roll out this year is integration with local printing services.
“If someone wants to print business cards in Brazil then the app will connect to a printer in their local area,” she said.