Interior design business management software Studio Designer has acquired competitor Mydoma. Between the two of them, the platforms will capture nearly 20,000 designer users. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
For Studio Designer, the deal allows it to reach more early-career designers who might not yet require the platform’s full suite of tools. Under the umbrella of its new parent company, Mydoma can provide users with a chance to scale up as their businesses become more complex. “This gives us the opportunity to serve designers for the entire breadth of their careers,” Studio Designer founder and CEO Keith Granet tells Business of Home. “Our system is robust, and [it] might take a team of multiple users to make the most of it and really commit to using it to run a business. We’ve found that the Mydoma system is definitely easier for a one-person firm to adopt. We felt like, ‘Why not be a part of that entire journey?’ You can start your firm with Mydoma, and as you grow and need additional tools, you can move over to Studio Designer.”
Mydoma CEO Sarah Daniele, an interior designer who co-founded the company in 2014 with her husband, Thomas Martineau, felt the brand was at an inflection point when the Studio Designer team approached her about a possible deal. “We knew it was either time to find a partner or to pursue an additional financing round,” Daniele tells BOH. “We don’t have a full-fledged accounting aspect with our software—that just wasn’t part of our core vision for the platform, and that was a major piece that we were missing. We knew this would be a good opportunity to partner with somebody who has already done this, has the experience, and is a great leader in the industry.”
By uniting the two platforms, Granet and Daniele hope to ease some of the growing pains that designers feel when they decide to change their software. “Right now, designers face a difficult choice where they can either [preemptively] go for the platform they’re going to need in a couple of years, or they can go for the platform that they need today but know that they’re going to have a painful transition down the line,” says Tyler Vieira, the president of Studio Designer. “Our intention is to maintain that Mydoma platform as a starting tier, and build an effortless upgrade path to the Studio Designer system.”
While the backend systems and customer-facing teams will be integrated, for the time being the two platforms will remain separate products. “We’re committed to the experience of the Mydoma users as much as we are to the Studio Designer users—nobody will have to change their system,” says Vieira.
Growth via acquisitions has been part of Studio Designer’s long-term plan since it received a growth investment from private equity firm Serent Capital in 2022. The new deal marks the company’s second such acquisition—last year, Studio Designer purchased DesignDocs, financial management and accounting software for interior designers. As with that acquisition, the company expects to keep the existing Mydoma team intact, though Daniele acknowledges that her role will evolve with the integration of the two platforms.
“Ultimately, we believe that we’re building something bigger and greater for the industry that’s going to service all designers,” she says. “From day one, our intention with Mydoma was to support our designers. [With this change], we’re bringing them more resources, additional products and opportunities for growth.”
Vieira and Granet expect that the combined resources of Studio Designer, Mydoma and DesignDocs will give the company a chance to more actively develop new functions, like AI-powered renderings. “We’re always considering what allows the designer to communicate to their client in the best light, make quick and good choices, and have the [design] process be as efficient as possible,” says Granet. “If we can make their lives easier, then we can make them more creative, because they’re focusing their energy on designing and not back-office work. That’s the ultimate mission here.”
