Swiss consultancy Luxoft acquires Seattle-based design firm Smashing Ideas
Luxoft Holding, a Swiss-based a global IT service provider, today (June 20) announced the acquisition of Smashing Ideas, a Seattle-based design and innovation agency.
Swiss IT consultancy Luxoft acquired Smashing Ideas, the Seattle-based creative arm of Penguin Random House / Serhat Beyazkaya, Selita Veer via Unsplash
Smashing Ideas, owned by book publisher Penguin Random House, has consulted brands across product design and development. Penguin Random House had owned the firm since 2011.
Luxoft said in a statement that the acquisition bolsters Luxoft’s digital research, strategy and design capabilities. Luxoft’s lines of businesses include digital enterprises, financial services, and automotive. Smashing Ideas has been named as part of its digital transformation practice, Luxoft Digital.
Dmirty Loschinin, chief executive of the Swiss holding group, said in a statement: “Our commitment to helping revolutionize the technology offerings of our clients is more evident than ever with our acquisition of Smashing Ideas. Luxoft prides itself on being a value-added provider that is focused on technical strategy and implementation. This move further extends our capabilities into design and business strategy, allowing us to provide even more value to our strategic client partners.”
Smashing Ideas chief executive Brian Burke, added: “By joining Luxoft, we are well-positioned to advance our clients’ most ambitious initiatives across the innovation lifecycle. Luxoft’s worldwide presence enables us to collaborate across time zones to service global clients via a multitude of delivery centers. This allows us to bring products to market faster, while Luxoft’s deep technical expertise in blockchain, IoT, and machine learning amplifies the enterprise scale we can provide. Together, we look forward to being a true innovation partner to our clients’ organizations.”
Nina van Moltke, president and director of strategic development for Penguin Random House US, said: “Penguin Random House and Smashing Ideas have enjoyed a long and productive working relationship. While we have continued to work together on several exciting digital product experiences, we believe that moving forward, Smashing Ideas, and its exceptionally talented strategists, designers, developers and program managers, will be best served by an owner that can contribute more synergies and added value for shared clients. We believe Smashing Ideas and Luxoft are a perfect fit, and we wish them enormous success together.”
Luxoft has joined what's becoming a long list of business consultancies acquiring agencies in creative marketing. Last month, Wongdoody was acquired by Infosys, and earlier this year, Accenture acquired San Francisco agency Heat.