Design Cuts Closes Abruptly: What This Means for Customers & Sellers

In a shocking move that has impacted the digital creative community, Design Cuts, a prominent marketplace for digital assets, ceased operations on January 16, 2025.

The sudden closure, which coincided with an announcement that Creative Market had acquired the Design Cuts brand, initially sparked concern among customers and sellers.

However, the company’s subsequent actions have demonstrated a commitment to supporting their community through the transition.

Behind the Closure: A Three-Year Battle

In their public messages Design Cuts indicated that the market had been challenging for the past few years, something reflected across many platforms and sellers in the industry.

Founder Tom Ross acknowledged in their public updates “As a self-funded startup, this has been particularly challenging.”

The company attempted to weather these difficulties through various means, including team adjustments and the launch of new ventures such as Creative Club. Directors forwent their salaries for months to keep the business operational whilst navigating challenging times.

Despite experiencing difficult periods over their 11 years, the current digital-asset market proved ultimately too insurmountable.

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As the company approached a financially precarious point, the team worked frantically to find a solution that would protect all stakeholders – their team, shop owners, and community members.

The Creative Market Solution

The acquisition by Creative Market emerged as a crucial lifeline.

“Creative Market came to our rescue as a great ally,” Ross stated. “They agreed to purchase the DC brand and domain”.

This deal proved instrumental in ensuring Design Cuts could cease trading, whilst trying to look after all parties.

The acquisition funds helped the company to pay all shop owners for outstanding sales and honor Creative Club subscription refund requests.

Swift Response to Customer Concerns

The initial announcements around closure have been acknowledged by the team as confusing and poorly worded. Despite having a team on-hand after closure, to help customers and sellers, many parties felt left in the dark and worried about their earnings and purchased assets.

Upon realising their original solution for downloads could not cope with the volume of requests, the company quickly developed and implemented a more robust download solution at designcuts.kinsta.cloud (this has been made available as a temporary solution, to help any customers in need).

This new system has proven successful, with tens of thousands of customers successfully accessing their past purchases and invoices. The platform provides a straightforward process: customers can log in with their existing Design Cuts credentials and download any previously purchased assets they haven’t already saved locally.

Course Content: A Continuing Challenge

The team is actively working to address course content access, which presents unique technical challenges due to its streaming nature. “These have never been available for direct download as they were delivered by a streaming service,” Ross explained in a social media update. The company is in discussions with course instructors to develop solutions for affected customers.

Community Response: From Shock to Support

The closure has sparked an outpouring of emotion from the Design Cuts community, revealing the platform’s impact beyond its commercial role. Long-time customers have shared both their initial disappointment and subsequent appreciation for the company’s handling of the situation.

“What you are working so hard to find solutions is a demonstration of how deeply you care, and how honorable you all are,” shared community member @keep.learning.always, reflecting a common sentiment among customers who have successfully accessed their purchases through the new system.

Designer and seller Gleb Guralnyk commented, “After 11 years of collaboration as an author, I’m left with only positive impressions. I’m sure you’ll handle all current customer issues smoothly.”

Impact on Sellers and Creative Club Members

True to their commitments, Design Cuts has ensured all sellers received payments for sales up until the January 16 closure date. While seller stores aren’t automatically migrating to Creative Market, requiring creators to rebuild their presence on other platforms, the acquisition deal has secured continued earnings for designers involved in Design Cuts’ original products.

For Creative Club subscribers, the company has implemented a straightforward refund process, with a submission deadline of February 16. Reports from the community indicate that refunds are being processed efficiently, with several members confirming receipt of their refunds.

Technical Implementation and Access

The new download platform has been thoughtfully implemented to manage the significant demand. The company has requested that customers only download files they haven’t previously saved, helping to manage bandwidth constraints and ensure system stability for all users. The platform also provides access to important documentation such as invoices, which many customers have requested for accounting purposes.

The team has clarified that this solution cannot be available forever, as the business is no-longer trading, and associated costs aren’t sustainable long-term.

Looking Forward: Legacy and Lessons

While the closure marks the end of what many describe as a unique creative community, Design Cuts’ response to the situation has helped preserve the goodwill built over its 11-year history. “We were not just a business, we were a community,” Ross reflected in his closure announcement, “and that’s down to all of you.”

The story of Design Cuts’ closure serves as both a cautionary tale about the challenges facing digital marketplaces and an example of how companies can manage difficult transitions with transparency and commitment to their community. Despite the initial shock of the closure, the company’s subsequent actions – maintaining a support team, implementing a comprehensive download solution, and ensuring all financial obligations are met – demonstrate a commitment to responsible business practices even in challenging circumstances.

For those affected by the closure, Design Cuts maintains customer support through hello@designcuts.com. Customers can access their purchased assets and invoices through the designcuts.kinsta.cloud platform, while solutions for course content continue to be developed.

Design Cuts Closure Letter

Source: Instagram

As most of you have already seen, Design Cuts sadly had to close our doors January 16th. Regretfully, this is not something we were able to announce prior to closure.

Following closure, we had kept a team on hand to help customers in need, but realised seeing volumes of requests, that our plans for serving past downloads weren’t sufficient.

We quickly set to work implementing a more robust solution, which we’ve been rolling out in a staggered fashion for the past week, in order to thoroughly test it and ensure it’s working well.

This solution is now available for all, via: https://designcuts.kinsta.cloud/.

Simply visit this page, login to your DC account like normal, and you can download any past purchases that you haven’t previously. If you have any issues, please contact hello@designcuts.com.

PLEASE NOTE:

Product downloads: These are now working and available for all. Please only download files that you have not previously, as we’re carefully trying to cover enough bandwidth for the whole community.

Invoices: These are available via this download page, as many of you have requested these for accounting purposes.

Courses: These have never been available for direct download as they were delivered by a streaming service, and so are a trickier proposition. We’re in close talks with some of our top course instructors and are working to find a solution for courses ASAP. However, we wanted to ensure we could share this download link publicly to help as many of you as possible. Rest assured we will be sharing updates here over the next week as we find solutions for purchased courses. Thank you so for your patience.