Aussie unicorn Canva partners with 132-year-old printing business to help SMEs take control of their marketing

Aussie design unicorn Canva has partnered with print franchise network Snap Print & Design, in a move designed to help small businesses and community organisations streamline their marketing efforts.

An integrated tool on Snap’s website will allow users to design materials including business cards, labels and posters, using Canva’s image and text libraries.

Through Snap, they can then get a quote on their printing, and order for delivery or collection from one of its 132 stores.

The partnership pairs Canva’s flagship drag-and-drop simplicity with Snap’s printing prowess.

It’s also something of an old-meets-new situation — while Canva has yet to reach its 10th birthday, Snap has been around since 1899,

“Deeply passionate about the printing craft, our founders were disruptors and innovators in their own right, and the first ones to bring digital printing to the masses in Australia,” chief growth officer Sonia Shwabsky said in a statement.

For Canva, the collaboration “made complete sense”, global partnerships lead Aaron Day said, adding that pairing Canva’s design library with Snap’s customer base is “empowering and supporting their customers to create and communicate with ease”.

However, the move comes just a week after smaller Aussie startup DesignCrowd secured $10 million in funding to ramp up its own DIY design offering BrandCrowd.

Rather than taking on Canva at its own game, DesignCrowd was laser-focused on the SME market, founder Alec Lynch told SmartCompany at the time.

Both the DesignCrowd and BrandCrowd products specialise in logos. They’re designed to work together, allowing small business owners to either commission a designer or do a DIY job, and then seamlessly move to the printing process.

With the Canva and Snap partnership apparently pegged to work much in the same way, this could be a space where competition is about to heat up.