Architonic turns 20! Two decades of curating the best in products and materials

Have we met before?

No, this isn't a chat-up line. It's an actual question. You see, I'm proud to say that I've been Editor-in-Chief at Architonic for well over a decade now. And, during that time, I – and, of course, the wider team – have been lucky enough to meet a lot of our community in person.

Architonic may be a pioneering digital business, but, from the outset, it's been a people business, too.

Our relations with our partners – be they architects, designers, planners, premium design brands, high-end retailers, fairs or journalists – have been central to who we are and what we do. So, there's a good chance that you've met us at a fair, a conference, a dinner or, indeed, at one of our legendary signature Architonic parties.

Why am I saying all of this? Because this year marks two decades of Architonic at the forefront of curating the best in architectural products and materials, an anniversary we’re fantastically proud of – and which we could never have achieved without your trust in us and our vision.

Founded in 2003 by two architects – Tobias Lutz and Nils Becker – who’d graduated from the ETH in Zurich, along with IT specialists Dieter Schumann and Thomas Navello, Architonic launched from the offices of architectural practice Gramazio & Kohler. Two rented desks, one phone and a small coffee machine. Oh, and zero external investment. Why? Because we were convinced from the start of our vision and were adamant we wanted to have full control of the Architonic project. For years, we ploughed every penny of our profit back into business.

Spool forward to 2023 and, together with ArchDaily and Designboom, we make up DAAily platforms, by far the world’s largest architecture and design community with over 270 million visits a year (generating over 3.7 billion page views!). Our joint mission is to inspire, connect and empower our ecosystem to create a better living environment for all.

The founding motivation at Architonic – and a belief that still drives us today – is to embrace technology, and in particular new technologies, to deliver targeted solutions for architects, as well as planners, manufacturers, retailers and others. And always via our architect perspective on what architects out there really need. Specific tools for a specific community.

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Back in the days of Web 1.0, architonic.com was launched with the clear objective of becoming the most comprehensive online resource for architecture and design. At the time, the only option for architects looking to specify premium products and materials for their projects was to trawl through endless manufacturer catalogues in their offices in the hope of finding the right stuff. Not a very effective use of their valuable time; and, of course, it was impossible to search by product category.

Architonic was developed to shake things up. A highly curated, highly credible, easily searchable database of the best brands (otherwise known as Architonic members), available on the internet, 24/7. We actually started out by scanning in a whole load of printed product brochures. One of the major challenges, amusingly, was to convince architects that it wasn’t a waste of time to allow their team to go online during work hours!

This was the time of e-commerce and its rapid rise. At Architonic, however, we were determined not to become an online shop. Rather, we wanted to develop further as an inclusive ecosystem for all actors in the industry. So, instead of cutting design retailers out of the picture, we helped them make further inroads into the online world by launching an innovative new service especially for them – the Architonic Virtual Showroom.

For the first time ever, dealers could maximise their presence in the market by having their own websites fed with real-time product data from the Architonic cloud. So whenever a brand they represented updated their collection, this would immediately be reflected on their pages.

The advent of Web 2.0 and our major investment in an ambitious and consistent social-media strategy saw our community develop even further, in a much more participatory and visible way.

We quickly became experts in creating value for both our users and our industry partners via architect-focused, channel-specific content, strong on information, but always with the Architonic commitment to relevance and careful curation. Your engagement spurred us on and we’re now able to say we enjoy almost a million Facebook followers, as well as a million on Instagram and Pinterest combined.

We kept hearing from many of our members that the old-fashioned press release or news story wasn’t cutting it anymore for them in their attempts to address architects. They needed something more effective, more relevant, that spoke the language of the design professional in an engaging and memorable way.

So, Architonic launched its dedicated brand-content service – high-quality, third-party-perspective design journalism, by architects for architects, which translates the brand and product messaging of our clients into professional narratives with intelligent take-aways. Always informative, always entertaining, sometimes emotional. Be it text-based or video, we’ve never stopped exploring new formats and, indeed, channels, to achieve the greatest impact.

After over a decade in business, Architonic had 100 staffers, 200,000 products online and an impressive eight million visits a year internationally. Yet, to achieve our full growth potential and, importantly, to stay the global leader in our field, we realised we needed extra skills, additional talent and significant investment.

In 2015, we were delighted to be acquired by the NZZ Media Group – the Swiss publishing heavyweight with a centuries-old tradition of quality and rigour – and become the flagship in their digital portfolio. With our new owners behind us, we were able to secure our pole position in the market in terms of reach and relevance, and to enrich our services for our community, meaning both our manufacturer clients and our architect users.

In 2020, we acquired the world’s most visited architecture website, ArchDaily, in our push to become the world’s most relevant, one-stop destination for design professionals. Ranked in the top 1,000 sites globally by Alexa, ArchDaily shared a very similar DNA to that of Architonic – founded by architects for architects. With its focus on the curation of projects and Architonic’s focus on products, it was the perfect fit in terms of mission and culture. A truly international organisation where we could bundle our joint experiences.

Two years later, we were thrilled to bring the world’s first online magazine, Designboom, into the fold. And, in doing so, create DAAily platforms, a super-strong triumvirate of global A&D channels, each passionate about their specific audiences, yet able to share knowledge and cross-leverage skills to create the best experience for our users and partners across the board.

After 20 years, the itch to innovate is still what drives us. It’s in our DNA. So while, on the one hand, we’re busy developing cutting-edge software solutions like the increased automation of data-management and image-editing, meaning a stress-free implementation for manufacturers of their content for an optimal product presentation on Architonic, we’re also committed to playing an active role in shaping the digital future for the A&D community.

Whether it’s our leveraging of blockchain tech in the form of our new DAAily Wallet project to help brands prove their sustainability credentials and protect their products from copycats; our forthcoming DAAily Index tool, designed to allow our members to measure their online success; or deploying AI to give our users the best search experience – we’re resolutely future-facing.

© Architonic

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