When Design Hero launched in 2018, founder Suraj Sodha had set out to create a service that would help clients build better businesses through better design. Design Pickle’s origin story, beginning a few years prior, is quite parallel. 

Russ Perry, Design Pickle’s founder and CEO, was an agency owner who always struggled to find reliable, affordable graphic design help to fulfill the needs of his clients. After some tough decisions — both in the office and in his personal life — and some reflection, Russ realized creating a subscription-based service for graphic design would allow countless businesses to avoid the same struggles he experienced as a business owner. 

With a pickle cart, a pickle suit, and a brand-new unlimited graphic design service, Perry introduced Design Pickle to the world at a marketing conference in January of 2015. A few years later, in July of 2019, Sodha and Perry met for the first time in London at a personal development event hosted by Perry. 

After that initial meeting, the two kept in contact. Over time, Sodha and Perry realized the businesses were aligned, with Design Hero’s mission directly complementing Design Pickle’s vision to change lives through creativity. Perry proposed the “crazy” idea of a potential acquisition, and Sodha was immediately interested. The two floated ideas back and forth about the trajectory of Design Pickle and how Design Hero could fit into the greater scheme over the next several months. 

When asked about what eventually pushed the deal forward, Sodha jokingly stated, “Well, I showed Design Pickle’s core value of tenacity and kept emailing Russ — it actually might have happened because he wanted fewer emails in his inbox.” 

By December of 2020, the final decision was made to formalize the deal. Ultimately, Design Pickle’s desire to expand to global markets and overall growth made the timing ripe for both parties.

“We’re thrilled to welcome the Design Hero team and roster of clients to the Design Pickle world,” Perry stated. “We look forward to combining our resources to continue building the largest subscription workforce solution in the creative services industry.” 

With the acquisition, Design Hero will now exist solely under the Design Pickle brand. Since its 2015 inception, Design Pickle has grown from two team members to over seven hundred globally, completing over one million creative requests in the process. 

“We’ve long admired the work Design Pickle has done to ensure better access to design help for all types of businesses,” Sodha says. “Now, under the Design Pickle umbrella, we look forward to delivering an even better experience to our clients and assisting with development plans throughout the globe.” 

Sodha joins the Design Pickle production team as the Senior Global Operations Manager, overseeing new product development, market expansion plans, and talent acquisition as the company continues to build its suite of creative offerings.  

Motion graphics, an additional creative service that will allow clients to create animated explainers and videos for social media, is in beta testing now with Sodha’s team and will become available for client use by late 2021. 

The Design Hero acquisition is the first phase of Design Pickle’s UK expansion strategy. The first wave of changes to the client experience include the addition of a UK and European time zone designation, ensuring clients have a localized experience and can access customer success teams when in need of support. 2021 is scheduled to bring several other significant changes to the company’s presence in the market.