Founded in 2009, MOJO Marketplace is a leading platform for digital goods, connecting our 5.8 millions users to 7,500+ items. Based in Salt Lake City the MOJO platform was built for the creators, the doers, the imagineers, the bloggers and the entrepreneur to provide the tools that bring ideas to life.
Our story begins in 2006, when WordPress was on the rise. Our founder, J.R. Farr, dreamed of creating a platform for designers and developers to sell premium products to an audience they might not otherwise reach. The dream was realized in 2008 when he began work on the original platform, WordPressThemeMarketplace.com (cringe!)
Over time the project became MOJO Themes and embodied by a little green monster. (thank goodness!) It took six months to design and build the first version of the MOJO Themes marketplace. In true visionary fashion, MOJO Themes was one of the first ecommerce sites built using WordPress.
Start a business they said. It will be easy they said. Everyone will want to sell their items, and the buyers will flock! Suffice it to say that was not the case. Due to limited items for sale, we faced a chicken or the egg conundrum; without Sellers, there were no Buyers. Without Buyers, there were no Sellers.
With the debut of the new Apple iPad, it was the perfect time to launch March Padness, a contest for the most themes uploaded! Three lucky winners got the most coveted device on the planet, and we boosted our inventory to launch ready.
As MOJO began to grow, so did the team. We added our first full time employee and started to recruit blue chip design and development talent. Isaac, Nick, Will, and Mike gave us the dream team we needed to take the themes marketplace world by storm. We’re happy to say that nearly seven years later, the original crew is still here, grinding & guiding MOJO Marketplace toward our vision.
In 2 short years we established ourselves as a legitimate ecommerce player. We need a more sophisticated back end infrastructure to handle our sales volume. We commissioned renowned designer Brian Hoff to redesign our marketplace. While still utilizing WordPress, the new platform facilitated our rapid growth as we doubled our users. It took us less than 4 months to add 10,000 new accounts.
In 2011, we saw our user count triple. We gave up short term wins for long term victories. A perfect example was our $10k giveaway. To encourage individuals to build something with MOJO products, we divvied out $10,000 to new users, deposited directly into their accounts. This allowed us to celebrate and encourage startup culture while growing our brand via word of mouth.
We were acquired by Endurance International Group on New Years Eve, 2012. The entire team stayed on board through the acquisition and continues to run MOJO today. As the only marketplace brand within the Endurance portfolio, we’d now be able to provide our digital goods to hosting customers around the world.
MOJO Themes became a part of history as the only recommended themes marketplace on WordPress.org. We had WordPress in our DNA from the beginning so it felt good to be globally recognized by the WordPress community.
After our acquisition we looked to the future of MOJO. We wanted to expand beyond just themes and plugins. MOJO Marketplace was born with a vision to become the largest provider of digital goods and services in the galaxy. We wanted to help others launch their dreams into orbit, just like JR and Brady did.
The Endurance family of brands includes: Constant Contact, Bluehost, Hostgator, iPage, Domain.com, and SiteBuilder, among others. We spent years integrating our marketplace platform into our sister brands. Today, those integrations provide millions of hosting customers access to MOJO products and services.
In the span of 5 years we grew to 4 million customers strong. To us, it’s not just a number. It’s a reminder that we must be doing something right. But more importantly, it’s a reminder we have a huge responsibility to deliver a reliable, industry leading product for our customers.
After focusing for many years on adding MOJO to the Endurance portfolio, we realized it was time for a brand refresh. We completely reimagined the entire marketplace, along with our own identity. We have a big vision for the future and the all new marketplace platform and brand identity have been redesigned to ensure we hit our aim.
WordPress and MOJO have been intrinsically linked since our initial launch. As a leading provider of WordPress products, selling hundreds of thousands throughout the years, we realized there was a gap in the WordPress space. WordPress users have a continual need for professional WordPress help. Via WP Live, we developed on-demand access to our stable of WordPress experts. Every day we help hundreds of people from around the world build, brand, and grow their online presence.
The greatest artistic inspirations live in the heart of the city. Making downtown SLC our new MOJO worldwide headquarters has created a vibrant office atmosphere, full of creativity, endless inspiration, and genuine enthusiasm for our work. We love creating a platform that helps so many people work toward realizing their dreams as we begin writing the next chapter in MOJO’s story.
We feel like we're just getting started. There' so much work to be done. We feel that we have everything in place from our foundation of users, integrations with the leading hosting brands, new brand, new platform and a big time vision. Now it's time to take MOJO to the next level.