UpThemes has retired all of their old themes, and released their first new theme. It’s part of an ongoing effort the better define who they are and what their goals are in their themes. According to my conversation with Chris Wallace, UpThemes founder, they didn’t want to support themes that didn’t follow the best practices they should be using.
UpThemes sales have dropped over previous years, so he says “not too many” customers are affected by retiring the old themes. Their new themes, starting with Amplify, will be more about supporting plugins that already do functionality well, versus baking functionality into the theme itself.
They will be relaunching their website with the new slate of themes, but for now all themes will be sold on ThemeForest. I hope their new themes and practices will take hold there, and that the slump in sales turns around. Retiring everything is a bold move, but probably what they needed.
In a related note, it makes me wonder just how many theme companies that have had some relative success in the past are being challenged by all the new competition and providers. And I wonder how many will be willing to make big changes like this versus simply fizzle out.
Thanks for the write-up Brian, I appreciate it. One thing to note is that we are still selling 5 of our blog-oriented themes on Creative Market and will also be entering the WordPress.com Theme Marketplace very soon and plan to be extremely active both there and on ThemeForest. This is part of an overall shift in our theme development to providing niche markets (such as bands, churches, food bloggers, authors) with beautiful, lean, responsive themes that lean heavily on existing plugins to provide high-end user experiences with less overhead.
im a customer of upthemes, will all the themes be removed? also about typecase pro, i also bought this, curious on the plans to keep in development.
I use creative market quite a bit now, nice to see you going that route also, it needs more great themes.