Business Catalyst, the company behind e-commerce software suite GoodBarry, was targeted by Adobe Systems and has agreed to sell the part American, part Australian company for an undisclosed amount.
Business Catalyst has published a couple of Q&A on its website that shed a minimal amount of light on the agreement. Apparently, there won’t be many changes at Business Catalyst as the products, partner agreements, team, pricing, etc. and these will remain mostly in place. With regards to GoodBarry, as it is a Business Catalyst brand set up for their retail operations, will be incorporated into the Business Catalyst offering:
Most importantly, we’ll be refocusing our marketing and sales efforts on the web professional market (via businesscatalyst.com), as opposed to web-savvy DIYers such as you. In other words, this means that eventually we will cease “retail” operations and focus on our wholesale operations, and we will only be selling subscriptions to our software via our partner and reseller network.
As a result, the GoodBarry brand as such will cease to exist as of the 1st of October 2009, although the company says changes for customer will be mostly cosmetical (the billing and branding will be all Business Catalyst as of the aforementioned date).
Business Catalyst / GoodBarry provides tools that help web designers set up online businesses for their clients with minimal cost and effort and no programming skills required, combining website content management, e-commerce features, e-mail marketing, business analytics and basic CRM tools into one system.
Adobe evidently offers a wide range of tools for web professionals, but in the near future does not plan to integrate Business Catalyst’s products into its own offering, although they are clearly looking to hosted services to deliver websites and online businesses with further emphasis.
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