If you are part of the Divi community, you have heard that Elegant Themes are planning a ‘Divi Marketplace’. It’s difficult not to if you watch the Divination Broadcasts as Nathan seems to manage to get a mention in there every time of late 😉
What we have noticed is that there has not been any comment from any other marketplace (at least in public) . So, we asked Nick what his plans were and he was quite forthright and honest (as we have known him to be) and said it was of course in his plans even from when he heard of The Elegant Marketplace starting out but, in reality its not going to be tomorrow.
So, how will an Elegant Themes Divi Marketplace affect the largest independent and longest established Divi Marketplace?
The answer is simple – we do not know. What we do know is that we are currently enjoying a fantastic surge in business, a great supply of Developers who are innovative and care about the community as much as we do. And, of course we are diversifying into the Learning Ecosystem as well as Elementor themes and plugins and WordPress Themes & plugins too.
We have contributed to the community by way of introducing and promoting great community members like Michelle Nunan, Fabio Sarcona, Colin Falcon and many others too numerous to mention. Frankly, we are proud to have been part of their success and will continue to give them our best attention.
With change come challenges – we offer our developers one of the best deals out there – no charge for transactions on their sales, no charge for payments of commissions and a very fair 70/30 percentage split on sales generated on an exclusive basis. With over $20,000 a month going out to our developers over the past 8 months – we can say without qualification that we, as a Divi marketplace have helped developers reach a wide and varied audience and we see no reason to stop doing what we do best.
During our time as founders, Eileen and I have had our challenges, Business partners not seeing eye to eye, business partners just leaving without a by your leave and criticisms across the community about how we run our business. Some of which has been hard to take – but, most have frankly, been ignored as we have always been certain of our integrity and our vision.
Our key focus has always been the community and, to that end, we have built up a fantastic Facebook Group that is the largest of any Theme specific group out there. We have very loyal and dedicated developers/vendors who are going to be without doubt tempted by the Elegant Themes Divi Marketplace and will surely want to list their products on a Theme store that is very very, popular. And, honestly, who can blame them.
In the meantime however, we are encouraging our customers to continue to support us as they have done, our developer/vendors to continue to develop outstanding products and give awesome support and of course, encourage new developer/vendors from all corners of the WordPress world to connect with us to facilitate their products whether they be for Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder or WordPress developments.
We are happy – when the time comes, to play second fiddle to such a great company like Elegant Themes – after all, without them, our community and our business would not exist – we are also happy to welcome the challenge of yet another Divi Marketplace – even if it is owned by the company that is the very reason we exist.
Will our relationship change with them? Who knows, but as a competitor with a big punch as well as a supplier we may very well cross swords, but, as a marketplace that has never lost money, grown organically with minimum out of pocket investment and, has always encouraged the best from our vendors and customers, perhaps we may have something to offer Elegant Themes – perhaps not.
We do, we think, have a unique reason why developers like us. We as a Marketplace do not develop our own products as we never want to ‘compete’ with our vendors – that will never change as its written into our DNA – this is not the case with other marketplaces and it certainly won’t be the case with an Elegant Themes Marketplace – its going to be a fun and interesting ride for sure.
It wouldn’t be right to not give a particular shout out to the people that have helped us on our way and continue to support us in our efforts to be the best we can be – Last year, we completely redesigned, rebuilt and relaunched our Divi Marketplace. Without certain members of the community the costs and the task of moving thousands of client accounts and tens of thousands of orders would have been insurmountable. So, an unreserved thank you to Sean Barton, Mor Cohen, Dehn Merrill, Jonathan Bossenger, Mahesh Pandy, Michelle Nunan and of course the Divi Theme Users Facebook Group and our 10,000+ client base. Let’s make 2017 the most exciting year ever!
We are good for now, Acquisition is what we are thinking about too, but actually us buying someone else out or taking over any marketplaces that may want to give it a rest -its hard work running one and we are close to getting it as good as it can be but trying to improve all the time. Licensing being one of our main concerns currently. Having said that, if the right offer comes up – who knows. But, they would have to have the same values as us, so that is a tough call 🙂
I was thinking about acquisition too!
Acquisition ? Merger?
Sure, why not, How much do you think ET will want 🙂