Shutterfly Completes Acquisition of Spoonflower, Expands Beyond Photo Personalization

Shutterfly, an online photo sharing and digital retail and manufacturing platform for personalized products, announces the completed acquisition of Spoonflower, a global marketplace of custom fabric, wallpaper, and home decor. The acquisition has an approximate enterprise value of $225 million, subject to certain working capital and other adjustments.

“We’re thrilled to join the Shutterfly family because we found the perfect fit for our business, products, team, and community as we work together to address the growing market opportunity,” says Michael Jones, GM of Spoonflower.

The acquisition expands on what people can create, customize, and buy on the Shutterfly platform, including wallpaper, fabric, and home decor. It will also connect 21 million active Shutterfly users to over 1 million designs created by independent artists in the Spoonflower marketplace.

“At Shutterfly, we believe that anyone can be a creator. That’s why we’re expanding the aperture of what you can discover, make and buy on our platform,” explains Hilary Schneider, chief executive officer at Shutterfly. “This strategic acquisition helps us expand our lens on creativity to include not only photo personalization but also a full range of custom designs created by independent artists. And we will break down the barriers to creating and discovering custom products, gifts, and home decor items by providing expanded access to high-quality manufacturing and production at scale for individual creators and small businesses alike. We’re delighted to welcome Spoonflower to the Shutterfly family of brands.”

This move doubles the total addressable market and positions Shutterfly to help close a gap in the creative economy, a $2.25 trillion industry, by leveraging its vertically integrated production platform to deliver premium customized products for millions of makers and small businesses.

Shutterfly customers will be able to buy custom designs or customize their own products in the Spoonflower artist marketplace, while designers and artists can sell their designs on Shutterfly or other platforms.

According to Coresight Research, makers are a fast-growing segment of the creative economy, driven by the massive increase of creative professionals using online platforms to market and sell unique designs across a variety of products.

“While the home décor marketplace enjoyed massive growth during COVID, the industry’s capacity to meet consumer demand was severely challenged, often delaying projects by months,” Deborah Weinswig, CEO/founder, Coresight Research, says. “We don’t see that demand flagging anytime soon, and so this acquisition addresses a huge gap in the marketplace. Shutterfly’s vast manufacturing footprint helps Spoonflower scale to meet the demands of consumers, interior designers, DIYers, small businesses, and artists.”

Spoonflower powers a community of more than 3.3 million unique artists, creators, and businesses with 4,000 new designs uploaded on average every day. Spoonflower is based in the tech hub Research Triangle Park (RTP) area in Durham, North Carolina with an international office in Berlin.