Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has acquired South African-founded WordPress theme development and e-commerce enablement businesses WooThemes and WooCommerce.
The deal is all about WooCommerce — a popular plug-in for WordPress — that grew out of WooThemes, a business started eight years ago by South Africans Adii Pienaar, Mark Forrester and Norwegian Magnus Jepson (Pienaar left the business in 2013).
The value of the deal hasn’t been disclosed, but TechCrunch, an American technology news website, quotes Automattic as saying that it’s by far the biggest acquisition by the company to date. Another website, Re/code, estimates the deal is worth US$30m.
WooCommerce employs 55 people in 16 countries, WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg said in a blog post.
The WooCommerce plug-in has more than 7,5m downloads and more than a million active installs.
“Even a conservative estimate that WooCommerce powers 650 000 storefronts means they’re enabling a huge number of independent sellers,” said Mullenweg.
Mullenweg released a video explaining the rationale for the acquisition — watch it below.
In a blog post, WooThemes’ Forrester says: “It’s the end of a chapter I’m hugely proud of, that began all the way back in 2007, and the start of an exciting new chapter aligned with our dream partner and the ultimate home for our open-source platform, WooCommerce.”
According to Forrester, WooCommerce today powers almost a quarter of all online stores. — (c) 2015 NewsCentral Media