Crowdsourcing marketplace DesignCrowd expands to Philippines, aims to woo small businesses

Crowdsourcing design-related work is now becoming a popular option for businesses or startups that need creative ideas for a logo, website design, or other marketing materials. Small companies benefit from getting designs quickly and being able to pick what’s the best for their needs. Seeing this demand in the Asia-Pacific region, Australia-based startup DesignCrowd has opened an office in the Philippines and launched the DesignCrowd Philippines site.

DesignCrowd now has a pool of 170,000 designers from around the world. The Philippines is one of the top six countries in terms of its registered designers.

In addition, the site is seeing a growing number of paying clients across Asia. DesignCrowd chief operating officer Chris McNamara says that 30 percent of the projects on DesignCrowd in 2013 were from users in the Asia-Pacific region.

The startup’s new office, located in central Manila, will be responsible for providing regional sales and technical support to new and existing DesignCrowd users. DesignCrowd also sees this as an opportunity to woo businesses in the Philippines. DesignCrowd Manila service consultant Stephanie Soon comments:

With such a large proportion of Filipino business being small and medium-sized, we’re excited about growing the design community and making crowdsourcing even more accessible to a larger number of businesses in the Philippines.

(See: How to use crowdsourced design to boost your startup’s productivity)

Small and medium-sized enterprises account for 99 percent of the total number of registered businesses in the Philippines.

DesignCrowd’s team in Manila currently consists of five service consultants supporting the Asia-Pacific region. It intends to double this number in the next 12 months.

DesignCrowd is available in over 160 countries around the world, including Indonesia and Japan. Rival sites – competing both for designers and paying users – include 99Designs, Fiverr and Indonesia’s Sribu.