20 Things You Didn’t Know about Frontify
Frontify is a global leader in brand management. By providing companies with a one-stop, cloud-based way to manage and share their brand assets, such as documents, imagery and more, Frontify’s clients experience increased efficiency and productivity. Frontify doesn’t just provide easy access for digital files, but also how they can be used by the clients. What sells Frontify to its clients, is the fact that it’s not just a storage bin up in the clouds. Instead it houses a host of digital brand management tools which serve the entire brand, providing ease of access to external partners as well as in-house creatives.
1. Frontify Raised 50 Million Dollars
The Swiss startup, Frontify won an impressive $50 million in series C funding. Backers include Revaia, High Sage Ventures, EQT Ventures, Tenderloin Ventures, and Blossom Capital. Founded in 2013, this startup based in St. Gallen Switzerland has been making its presence known by providing a convenient and user friendly brand management platform for its clients. As for the funds raised, Frontify plans to use these funds to increase its reach, especially in the states, as well as keep their brand management tools on the cutting-edge.
2. Founder Roger Dudley Believes in Blending of Tech and the Arts
Roger Dudler began his path to Frontify founder via an apprenticeship program in his native country of Switzerland. Once he gained his footing in coding and acquired work experience, he found his passion: To blend creativity and tech. Roger credits his fathers love of creating art various medium as a huge influence on his life path. His dad’s interest in the arts fueled his design to take the creative elements necessary for branding, and use his own love of tech to create Frontify.
3. 2021 Top Performer in Capterra Shortlist Report
“We’re a company that prides itself on listening to our customers and delivering a brand management and collaboration solution that meets their needs,” said Roger Dudler, CEO and Founder at Frontify. Frontify has much to celebrate in 2021, one of which is the 2021 Brand Management Software Shortlis Award, presented by Capterra. Capterra matches their client companies with the most effective and efficient software for their particular needs. Roger Dudler continued by saying the importance of this award was how the award was determined: Popularity and user ratings.
4. Frontify Creates a Developer Platform
In August 2021, Frontify introduced a group of tools called the Developer Platform. The Developer Platform will allow Frontify clients to make their brand their own. In other words, Frontify realizes that each client has their own applications, and this new Developer Platform will assist in their integration. As a result, clients have the freedom necessary to develop the uniqueness of their brand. “The Frontify Developer Platform was created because each brand has its own tech-stack and set of applications, and tools,” stated Remo Brunschwiler, VP of Product at Frontify. “By opening up our platform to developers, we enable them to automate their brand processes, and mold Frontify into their tool landscape – further elevating their holistic brand ecosystem through Frontify. With the best developer experience in mind, our developer tools and services make building your own integrations a breeze. Now, the platform can integrate with any tools people are using every day.”
5. Frontify introduces its First Desktop App
In 2020, Frontify unveiled its first desktop app, Frontify for Desktop. Now that Frontify has an app, its clients are free to take advantage of all that Frontify has to offer, wherever they are. This means that clients will have full, unbridled access to Frontify’s vast asset libraries, such as imagery, documents and logos, among others. According to Kerstin Ludwig of Scout24, “Our teams love the freedom to work in any tool they like, and the ability to include assets from our central pool through the app without any friction”.
6. Frontify Actually Acquired More Customers During the Pandemic
As Frontify is a cloud-based company. Along with other companies that deal with cloud and telecommuting, the environment created by the pandemic favored such Businesses. As such, Frontify gained 300 new clients during the pandemic. At the time of this writing, Frontify has around 5,000 clients. Examples of companies that use Frontify are Facebook, Vodafone, Sennheiser, Pepsi and Lufthansa.
7. The United Nations Selects Frontify
In 2020, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, (OCHA) elected to use Frontify to coordinate any and all information between its 30 offices. These offices exist throughout the world, and having Frontify manage and distribute its assets among one another, has allowed OCHA to increase it’s efficiency responding to world events. What made Frontify the best system, is its user friendly design.
8. City of Chicago Uses Frontify
“Frontify really helped us in three major ways: it helped us save money, create a brand home that had inclusion naturally built into it, and devise clear city messages that people could really understand.” Those are some pretty high sounding words of praise coming from Jason Kunesh, Design Director for the City of Chicago. When the City initially used Frontify, it was solely for the purpose of brand management. Once they put Frontify to the task, they also discovered that Frontify offered them space to store important assets, such as imagery.
9. Frontify Utilizes a non-commission Sales Staff
As can be seen, Frontify is at the forefront when it comes to brand management. Frontify believes strongly in the power of authenticity, and a big part of authenticity is placing the client ahead of the drive for commissions. In commission based sales, it’s all about the dollar, and that’s it. However, when sales are non-commission, client happiness outranks sales commission. This in turn, means that the client will be the central focus of the transaction, which guarantees they’ll receive the proper tools for their company.
10. In 2019 Frontify Made a Concerted Effort to Expand in the U.S.
According to Frontify CEO, Andreas Fischler, expanding into the states would take expert planning, “We’ve been looking to set down root in the United States for some time now, but we needed to do it right…”. When they did decide they were ready, they opened their first office in New York City. By having an office in the states, they would be within close proximity to their U.S. clientele.
11. Frontify helps Airline Giant Luftanasa Manage Their Projects
From the moment Lufthansa elected to utilize Frontify’s services, they noticed a tremendous difference in efficiency and productivity. With over 1000 active users and over 300 ongoing projects, Lufthanasa has become a true believer in the brand management style of Frontify, “The effect of Frontify was immediate. We increased the quality of communicating through a higher brand consistency, we strengthened individual work due to better access to information and measured a considerable cost reduction – resulting in a possibility for higher production rate.”
12. Frontify’s State of Brand of Ownership Report Discovers Issues in Brand Ownership
When Frontify completed their State of Brand Ownership Report, they uncovered some interesting facts. Basically, Frontify found that a majority of brands are in a state of confusion when it comes to brand ownership. In other words, a company is made up of a variety of departments. As a result of this study, different departments considered themselves the owner of the brand. For instance, the ACME company has both a marketing division and human resources department, with each department feeling they are in control of the brand. By eliminating this confusion, one increases company efficiency.
13. Frontify Decides on DesignStudio to Freshen Up Their Overall Look
When it came time for Frontify to shed its skin in favor of a new and improved look, they turned to famed design house, DesignStudio. According to CEO Roger Dudler, “Every touchpoint and experience people have with our brand matters – especially when you’re the home for brands. So, we took ours back to the drawing board for a major rebrand, and we’re beyond happy with the result,”. The revamp included a newly designed website and logo.
14. Frontify Joins South African Praekelt Consulting Firm
With the advent of cloud storage, companies found themselves wanting for just one brand management entity to deal with their account. Enter Frontify and its new partner Praekelt Consulting. By bonding, their clients get the best of both worlds. They have one single entity with which to house their branding details. As Praekelt also deals mostly with the Middle East and Africa, it also helps to expand Swiss-based Frontify’s global presence, “We’re very happy to partner with Praekelt and further expand our presence in South Africa“, said Ritchie Yoshikawa of Frontify.
15. Frontify Teams Up With Celum
Like Frontify, Celum is a content management powerhouse. When Frontify made the strategic move to partner with Celum in May of 2021, it garnered the ability to provide their clients with more options. These options then allow their clients to operate more efficiently and with greater creative freedom with regards to brand management. The result means product presentations with optimal impact, while various content management teams can now function together with ease minus confusion.
16. Frontify Makes Financial Times List of Europe’s Fastest Growing Companies
Financial Times is a well-respected publication which reports on global financial issues.As reported in the Financial Times article dated March 2021, Frontify was listed as one of their fastest growing companies. Using Statista, Financial Times found that the Swiss company made number 160 on their list of 1000. Growth was measured between the years 2016 and 2019. It was the companies responsibility to register their business with both Stastica and Financial Times.
17. Frontify Teams up with Templafy
Templafy is a cloud-based document management company which enables businesses to manage their business content more efficiently. This high-end company claims businesses such as Ikea, Pandora, Insight Partners, KPMG and more. Their partnership with Templafy enables Frontify and its clients to create the documents as well as emails from anywhere. “Providing our customers with the best, most consistent, and complete brand solution is a major driver for us. We’re proud of the alliance with Templafy – a natural complement to our offerings – and excited for the possibilities ahead,” said founder & CEO of Frontify, Roger Dudler.
18. Frontify Joins the Cloud Security Alliance.
The Cloud Security Alliance, or CSA is an organization which works to establish the best cloud-based security practices. With over 90,000 members, CSA’s success speaks for itself. Being a member of CSA is particularly important when it comes to garnering client trust.
19. Roger Dudler Credits Myke Naef as a Mentor
No one can become a success on their own. We’re all a compilation of the many good and helpful people who’ve set us on our path. Frontify’s founder, Roger Dudler credits Doodle founder Myke Naef as someone who became his mentor when it came to opening Frontify. To hear Roger tell it, he and Myke met on a regular basis for around a year and a half. The purpose of these meetings was to school Roger in the fine art of running a successful business, “He would ask challenging questions when I needed to hear them and would encourage me when I needed it.”
20. Frontify’s Founder, Roger Dudler’s List of “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started Leading My Company”.
File this one under “Lessons Learned”. Below we’ve listed the 5 things Dudler wished he knew before he began his journey to create Frontify. Before you say to yourself that a list like this doesn’t apply to you because you’ve no interest in starting a business, know that you can apply a few these life lessons to other areas to your life:
- Give yourself a make-over every 6 months
- It’s impossible to please all people, so consider yourself first
- Attaining success is one thing. To keep it, nurture yourself, take care of yourself
- You’ll most likely manage people
- Learn about the benefits of becoming a venture capital-funded business
- By learning from successful people like Roger, you’ll gain a greater insight in just what it takes to make the decisions which will either make or break you and your business.
Final Thoughts
As can be seen, Frontify provides their clients with a crisp, clear and easy way to use brand management tools. Founded by Roger Dudler in 2013, Frontify has seen nothing but success. This success is due to the application of logical and critical thinking and planning on the part of its leaders. Decisions such as partnering up with firms which help to add further options to their plate, to their move to increase their global presence, have led to high user ratings and popularity. At the time of this writing, Frontify shows no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, the future of this recent startup looks positive and prosperous.
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