Canva reveals its ambitions after acquiring Affinity

The news went off like a bombshell. March 26, 2024 acquisition of Affinity by It can go he was officially announced by two companies, after it was discovered, a few hours earlier, in columns of Bloomberg. By buying a rival suite from Adobe for an undisclosed sum, Canva has shown its ambitions: “Create the most complete package of visual communications in the world”. All this by strengthening its presence in Europe, a strategic market for the Australian company, which today boasts 180 million active users worldwide.

But what exactly does this download mean for users? Can we expect synergies, or changes in their business models? BDM put these questions to Duncan Clark, head of Europe at Canva.

What were the reasons you first considered buying Affinity?

Canva and Affinity share a mission to democratize graphic design and bring to market tools that are more accessible, powerful and easy to use. From our first meeting with Affinity, we quickly realized how incredibly talented and passionate their team is and how their product and values ​​align with ours.

This acquisition accelerates our goal of empowering the world to create. So far we have focused on 99% of users without any graphics training. This acquisition allows us to bring value to all graphic designers, of all levels and at all stages of the creative process.

What factors do you think have helped Affinity become one of the leading alternatives to the Adobe suite over time?

Affinity’s product has enjoyed worldwide success. Its software is used by more than three million graphic designers and has won countless awards, including Apple’s Mac App of the Year multiple times.

Designed with professional graphic designers in mind, the product offers lightning-fast performance, non-destructive editing and seamlessly integrated workflows, all at a fraction of the cost of competing software and with greater ease of use. This combination has allowed Affinity to establish itself as one of the leading tools on the market for many types of professional graphic designers.

You stated that in the press release “Canva and Affinity form a powerful alliance”. Why do you think these two solutions are so complementary?

We believe there is a huge opportunity to not only bring Affinity’s speed, technical advantages and savings to more graphics professionals around the world, but to create a combined offering worthy of a single place where professionals create assets and visual identities on Affinity and make them available to their entire company on Canva.

This will bring significant benefits to the work organization, while also solving the challenges business leaders face with application fragmentation within their organization. By having fewer applications and more teams working on a central platform, companies can consolidate their tools, save money and reduce unnecessary complexity.

This acquisition is key to achieving Canva’s goal of developing the most comprehensive visual communications offering in the world, for all types of graphic designers and for all organizations.

What new markets do you hope to reach with this acquisition?

Canva is already a truly global company, with more than 180 million monthly active users in more than 190 countries. Affinity also has users around the world. The acquisition is therefore not so much about breaking into new territories as about creating a unified visual communication offer that will raise awareness of Affinity’s products, while Canva will be even more useful for all creative profiles in organizations.

You have chosen to retain the perpetual license principle for Affinity. Why ?

Canva and Affinity share a commitment to fostering equality and accessibility in creation. For Canva, this means offering users many of our products for free, while Affinity opts for a perpetual licensing model at a reasonable price.

As part of this acquisition, it was important to us to ensure that the established Affinity community welcomed the news with enthusiasm and did not feel abandoned. We appreciate Affinity’s commitment to this approach and intend to maintain the perpetual license model, as we know it is important to the Affinity community. We also intend to explore new ways to reach our Affinity users through Canva.

Can we expect synergies between Canva and Affinity?

This acquisition paves the way for a future where professional designers work with Affinity and grow with Canva. Affinity is an amazing and highly regarded product and we plan to continue to invest in its standalone offering. Together, we intend to accelerate the development of new Affinity features. Over time, we will also create integrations between the Affinity and Canva products to add value to users of both tools, as we have done with previous acquisitions.

Canva and Affinity are committed to product development based on creators’ ideas, feedback and needs. What methods do you use to specifically identify those needs?

At Canva, we are constantly developing our products to meet the demands of our users. Especially demand for AI tools which is currently very strong: our AI features on Canva have already been used more than four billion times. Our teams regularly talk to our users, especially those from the business world. With Canva now used by more than 95% of Fortune 500 companies, our teams work closely with business leaders to understand exactly what they need to operate effectively as an organization. This helps us identify pain points and how we can solve them with our product.

With the Affinity acquisition, we’ve implemented a feedback and comment system that lets us know what new features our community would like to see after this acquisition and helps us establish our product development strategy.

What are the top needs expressed by Affinity users right now?

Affinity’s product is attracting the attention of more professional graphic designers and its user base has expanded rapidly. This results in a sudden increase in requests for new features and updates.

Being able to use Canva’s resources means that some of the most requested features will arrive sooner than expected.

You expressed your intention to strengthen your presence in Europe. Why is this market crucial for Canva?

Expanding our presence in Europe makes sense for Canva for several reasons. First of all, Europe represents a dynamic and diverse market, rich in different cultures, languages ​​and industries. Europe is also home to a booming tech scene, with thousands of innovative startups and global companies based in key European cities such as London and Paris.

As Canva expands into businesses and becomes an essential tool for organizations, we know it’s important to double our offering in this part of the world and collaborate with business leaders in European markets. Our presence in Europe also meets the needs of our users: large communities use Canva every day in markets like Germany, France, Spain and Italy, and we are committed to localizing our product to maximize the benefits for our international users.

In addition to Affinity, we have acquired six other European companies to date, including Flourish, a data visualization tool based in London that I co-founded, and Austrian AI technology company Kaleido. We also opened our European headquarters in London last year, marking our official launch in the region. Since Canva is a truly global company, a presence in the European time zone makes sense from a strategic perspective, we’re really excited that our team in this region now numbers around 350 people and is growing rapidly.