Architonic and Designboom launch strategic alliance

...This statement from Designboom co-founder Birgit Lohmann sums up neatly our vision for this strategic alliance. Each of the two companies, which will continue to operate autonomously, is an international market leader in its own particular area of expertise – put quite simply, Architonic as a product database and Designboom as online architecture and design magazine.

The core of the cooperation is the integration of content from the Architonic product database into Designboom's editorial content. As a result, for the 4 million readers that Designboom enjoys every month, their daily update of news from the worlds of architecture, design and art is enhanced by details of the latest products and materials from all around the world. This opens up additional markets and channels of communication for the over 1,000 manufacturers who already present their products on Architonic. With immediate effect, five new products from each of these manufacturers are now also presented daily on Designboom. If they wish, Designboom members are able to have their entire Architonic product range appear in the Designboom Product Library. The product data is kept up-to-date, of course, on a centralised, daily basis via the Architonic database.

Shared values and visions are the most important basis for the alliance. For example, the founders of both companies come from within their respective industries. Before establishing Designboom, Birgit Lohmann and Massimo Mini worked as designers with masters such as Achille Castiglioni, Enzo Mari and Vico Magistretti, while the two Architonic founders, Nils Becker and Tobias Lutz, studied architecture under teachers such as Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind. It is therefore not surprising that, thanks to their highly selective choice of content, both portals enjoy a high level of credibility on the design and architecture scene. A further vital precondition for this is that, to the present day, both companies are owner-operated and independent, and can thus concentrate on sustainable long-term development rather than short-term profits. To put it in a nutshell, the alliance is based on a shared commitment to quality content, daily inspiration, efficient working instruments and a passion for the cause.

This strategy has clearly paid off: Designboom, which is located in Milan, has been online since 1999, while next year Architonic will be celebrating its tenth anniversary in Zurich. Both companies are pioneers in their individual fields. However, the most important indicator of success are the readers themselves. In the case of Designboom, an annual 48 million visitors generate a total of 96 million page views – in other words two per visit. On the research resource Architonic, each reader generates six page views, so, with 16 million readers a year in total, this also means 96 million page views annually.

In addition, Architonic and Designboom are also a perfect match in terms of the geographic distribution of their readers. While 70% of Architonic’s readership is Europe-based, 50% of Designboom readers come from America and 20% from Asia. As a result, the cooperation between the two partners has the effect of doubling their coverage, with a combined geographic distribution of 40% Europe, 40% America and 20% Asia representing a perfectly balanced mix for global communication.