Swedish design consultancy acquired by McKinsey & Company
Professional services group McKinsey & Company have acquired award-winning design agency Veryday. The Swedish agency have researched and co-designed a number of high profile campaigns in recent years, for projects including flat-pack home design giants IKEA’s Home Smart furniture and male grooming magnates Gillette’s ProGlide razor range.
McKinsey & Company have completed the purchase of the design agency Veryday for an undisclosed fee. The consulting industry has seen continued M&A activity recently, with a number of firms including EY, Capita and Cognizant all vying for access to the increasingly lucrative design market. Veryday, which almost exclusively on international projects, has won more than 240 awards, and new products it designed have been granted more than 300 patents. In 2014, the firm was selected as Red Hot Design Team of the Year, an internationally recognised honour previously awarded to the likes of Apple, BMW, and Porsche.
The deal to bring them into McKinsey Design further strengthens the firm’s marketing offering, adding to the new talent already obtained in 2015, when McKinsey also obtained California-based LUNAR, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest design firms. The firm hopes its expanding design wing can help clients grow more quickly by creating innovative new products and services.
Veryday was founded in 1969 as Ergonomidesign, rebranding to its current form in 2012 to reflect the changing nature of the group’s work, while paying homage to Sweden’s history of affordable, universal design. Following the acquisition, Veriday will retain that new name, along with its management team. Its 90-plus designers, researchers, and other colleagues will meanwhile continue to serve long-standing clients from their offices in New York, London, Dubai, Singapore and their headquarters, a rescued and renovated church in Stockholm. While the agency will retain its independence however, the deal, which was advised on the sellers end by boutique financial advisory Stella, will also see Veryday join with McKinsey teams on joint opportunities.
According to Volker Grüntges, the Munich-based senior partner who led the acquisition from the McKinsey side, the firm were searching for a highly reputable design firm which hosts world-class designers. Grüntges contended that Veryday were the perfect match, saying, “Veryday is ahead of the curve because its work combines physical product design, service design, and an engaging experience. The convergence of physical and digital, of products and services, is a huge opportunity for a lot of our clients.”
Niclas Andersson, Chief Business Officer at Veryday meanwhile agreed the two companies seemed ideally suited to one another’s business philosophies. “We are convinced that joining forces with McKinsey & Company will be tremendously beneficial for the design community as well as for our clients. We share a passion for design thinking and innovation, as well as the ambition to unlock growth, creating better companies and new user-centred offerings,” he concluded.
