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.