Studio Vondel is acquiring web agency Pixelgracht from Utrecht. Pixelgracht's 14 employees, who specialise in e-commerce development, keep working under their own name and stay on board in full. Together, the agency grows to 52 employees and revenue of 6.8 million euros. The acquisition takes effect immediately.
Trade body Dutch Digital Agencies is seeing growing consolidation in the agency world: smaller specialist agencies are increasingly joining larger players to pool technology, capacity and client relationships. For clients, that often creates uncertainty about whether their regular contact person and way of working stay the same, while staff at the acquired agency frequently learn that ownership is changing straight from a press release. Studio Vondel and Pixelgracht want to show that an acquisition can happen without that unease, with a team that stays intact and clients who keep the same people across the table.
For Pixelgracht's clients, little changes: the agency keeps operating under its own name from Utrecht and the full team of 14 employees stays on board. Combined, the new group counts 52 employees and revenue of 6.8 million euros. "We didn't buy a client list, we bought a team that has spent years proving how e-commerce development should be done," says Sanne de Wit, managing director of Studio Vondel. "We didn't want to dilute that quality by forcing everything under one brand."
For Daan Kuiper, founder of Pixelgracht, the choice for Studio Vondel was mainly a matter of culture. "We were looking for a partner who understands how we work instead of one who takes it over," says Kuiper. Over the coming months, the two agencies will build a joint proposition for mid-sized retailers, which will be offered to existing and new clients from January.