

Colourlovers Buys Forrst - suhailpatel
http://pandodaily.com/2012/03/26/colourlovers-buys-forrst-to-build-an-etsy-for-digital-bling/

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kylebragger
Here's our (my) take on it: [http://blog.forrst.com/post/19956380482/big-news-
forrst-has-...](http://blog.forrst.com/post/19956380482/big-news-forrst-has-
been-acquired-by-colourlovers)

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cleverjake
congrats, kyle!

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kylebragger
Thanks!

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scoot
It blows me away that a website built around a niche community as (apparently)
narrow as colour palettes can be profitable, never mind profitable enough to
be acquisitive. Congrats to both parties, but boy would I love to see how the
numbers stack up!

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dariusmonsef
It was built around color palettes... but is much more than that now. We
have... professional desktop color & vector image editing software. Themeleon
is a twitter profile tool linked right from Twitter.com. A creative community
with 2M visitors per month and ad revenue on those pageviews.

It's enough to keep the doors open and the company growing... but
CreativeMarket.com will be where the meat of our revenue will come from.

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ig1
At a CPM of $1 and 10 impressions per visitor that only comes out to
$10,000/month. Even if I'm off by 10x on the impressions per visitor it's
still not a huge amount of money.

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xpose2000
I would kill for $10k per month.

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ig1
It's not enough to support a startup though, it's barely enough for one full-
time developer.

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xpose2000
Congrats to Kyle, being acquired is no easy feat.

Now for some speculation:

My guess is that Forrst wasn't growing as much as it used to or stopped
growing all-together and people started getting nervous. (I noticed fewer
activity by its users).

Looking at the alexa numbers, its popularity peaked in the middle of 2011.
Pageviews took a huge dive since then, which is extremely alarming. Obviously
Alexa isn't 100% accurate, but it gives a decent estimation on where the site
is trending.

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citricsquid
You can see their full and accurate traffic statistics here:
<http://getclicky.com/stats/?site_id=177955>

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xpose2000
That link does not have a valid public token with it.

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nullflux
First things first, congratulations.

Do you guys on either side of it want to get into the terms of acquisition a
bit more, just for curiosity's sake?

I suspect that it is not a spectacular return for the seed investors. Forrst
guys get jobs and some nominal signing bonuses as they're likely running low
on funds, having closed a $204K seed a year ago. See compete:

<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/forrst.com/>
<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/dribbble.com/>

It makes a lot more sense for COLOURlovers to acquire the team and the
community to strengthen themselves, being an ultra-huge design community. I'm
happy that they are keeping Forrst around. CL is also hiring recently, so this
gives them a staff boost of good designers/developers with startup
mentalities.

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aaronblohowiak
I hope COLOURlovers gets a rebrand. The company is doing interesting things,
but that name is displeasing to my taste. Written Coulourlovers (as in the
title, but incorrect according to their trademark) is much more pleasing to
the eye. Even the corporation name, CHROMAom Inc has this nauseating letter
casing. le sigh.

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dariusmonsef
We consider naming stuff often... You'll be happy to know our new site
CreativeMarket.com only has two capital letters in it.

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aaronblohowiak
Splendid! I know that I am in good company in looking forward to the launch of
CreativeMarket.com.

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switz
Very happy to see that Forrst will continue to operate as its own product. I
was worried for a second. Congrats Kyle!!

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kylebragger
Thanks! Yeah, sad to see good products disappearing like that.

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Mjux
Congratulations! kyle, darius. Best wishes to all the extended forrst team.

(+ waiting to see the new team in forrst vigor)

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jwwest
I'm a little wary. Forrst caters to both designers and developers, so
hopefully this acquisition doesn't effect the core product. Feedback is very
easy to get on Forrst right now, which is one of it's biggest draws for me
personally.

An aside: this article is terribly written.

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lbotos
As a forrst user I noticed that all registration was closed. Is there plans to
open that back up in the near future? How do you plan on handling the quality
of forrst experience in the future?

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dariusmonsef
Our plan is to not make any broad changes immediately. I think too often
acquirers do that and fuck things up. Kyle & team are staying on and we'll
work together to make Forrst a valuable place for designers & developers to
share ideas, get feedback and learn from each other.

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intellection
Thank you for thinking long term.

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DLarsen
Although I haven't followed the Forrst tale very closely, I always got the
feeling that Forrst would not be very susceptible to acquisition. Had that
smokey kind of campfire flavor to it. As a Forrst lurker, I'm glad I'll have
the same familiar place to lurk.

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alexkearns
Probably my two favourite sites coming together. Love the community and
feedback you get at Forrst. Love how ColourLovers are helping people to be
creative. Good luck Kyle and Darius!

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Mizza
Congratulations, Kyle!

Two big acquisitions in such a short period of time - I can't say I'm not
jealous!

What are you gonna do with all that free time? :)

