The Lucid Theme shop was run by Jon Bellah until today. He still maintains the Lucid brand, but he’s sold his themes to UpThemes. When I inquired with Chris Wallace, founder of UpThemes, about why they made the acquisition, he said, “each of the themes fills a need that our current catalog does not reach.”
The Lucid theme collection is quite nice. It includes a portfolio, magazine, blog, and WooCommerce theme. Those are pretty good general bases to cover.
Jon started Lucid at the beginning of the year, according to his post about the acquisition. Jon and Chris both live in McKinney, Texas, and after Chris approached him about a potential acquisition, they quickly came to an agreement.
He doesn’t cite all of his reason for the sale, but I assume it was at least in part due to slow sales growth. Selling themes is definitely about a lot more than good design and code. Jon is also on the verge of an announcement about joining a development agency full time (I’ll give you three guesses as to which one, which is way too many).
This isn’t the only news you should expect from UpThemes. They’ve made some bold decisions in the last year or so; moves that I think are necessary in the changing theme landscape. Chris also has written an interesting take on themes on his blog.
It’s my understanding that another acquisition and new market exploration is underway for UpThemes as we speak. These are the kind of moves that I think are going to help some theme companies come out of the rubble of a collapsing market, if you’ll allow me to dramatize the situation.
“Selling themes is definitely about a lot more than good design and code.”
– It’s interesting how some companies are not doing so well (Lucid Themes) and yet other companies of similar age (take Tesla Themes for example) seems to be really thriving… I wonder why some succeed and some don’t… is it primarily just a case of better marketing for example?
“…the rubble of a collapsing market”
– But is there any evidence to suggest it’s a collapsing market? Some new companies (i.e. about a year old or so) seem to be really thriving…
The decision to sell had little to do with slow sales growth. But you and Brian aren’t wrong… sales were slow and most of it was due to a lack of marketing.
The plan from the beginning was to build a bit of a catalog before really throwing some weight into marketing it, though.
The decision had a lot more to do with the coming job announcement and a desire to narrow my focus to fewer side projects.
Our SalesGenius app can confirm that there definitely is a contraction however it’s not collapsing.