What are the top 50 foundries today?

Nadine Chahine · December 10

Hello all,
I'm working on my research for the font business models and pricing seminar and would love your feedback on the following please:

- what are the top 50 foundries who have their own shops?
- which foundries are leading with new business models (pricing based on revenue or company size)?

I have a list already but would like to make sure I don't miss anyone. Also for the sake of clarification, a top foundry in this case would be the one most likely to influence market movement. So it's not about how many awards it wins, or how many employees, but its ability to set business standards. This could very well depend on all of the previously mentioned, but is not exclusive to design skills or size.

Thank you for all the help!
-n

Stephen Coles · December 10

I guess there are many criteria you could use to determine a foundry’s influence. One might be popularity of their fonts. For this, you could start with the foundries behind the typefaces that appear most frequently on Fonts In Use. Here is a list of 41 such faces:

Note: This list omits properties of Adobe and Monotype, which are obviously at the top of influential foundries. The list also omits open source type.

The foundries represented by the typefaces above are:

Add Adobe, Google, and Monotype and you’ve got a good start with 23 top foundries.

Typedesigner · December 10

In Germany, for instance, an annual ranking of the largest owner-managed communications agencies is published. The ranking is based on the gross income of the communications agencies. The number of employees also plays an important role. It would be reasonable to suggest that the same criterion should also be applied to foundries. The more turnover a foundry makes, the more influence it has. In this way, a ranking could also be created for foundries. However, foundries tend to be smaller than advertising agencies and communication agencies.

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/181886/umfrage/die-groessten-inhabergefuehrten-werbeagenturen-in-deutschland/

bramstein · December 10

It's probably biased towards web-usage, but the Web Almanac Font's chapter contains a list of top foundries by web font usage:

https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/fonts#fig-19

The raw data has more entries:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EkdvJ8e0B9Rr42evC2Ds5Ekwq6gF9oLBW0BA5cmSUT4/edit?gid=536602154#gid=536602154

Mark Simonson · December 10

@Typedesigner The only problem with that idea is that the gross income of foundries is not usually made publicly available.

Typedesigner · December 10

@Mark Simonson This depends on the legal form of the foundry and the country in which the foundry is based. For example, if a foundry has the legal form of a limited company and is based in the UK, all of the foundry's annual reports are publicly accessible, as with all other companies.

John Hudson · December 10

if a foundry has the legal form of a limited company and is based in the UK, all of the foundry's annual reports are publicly accessible

That would be the case for public limited companies in most jurisdictions, i.e. companies whose shares are publicly traded, but not for limited companies that are privately owned.

Nadine Chahine · December 10

This is all super helpful. Thank you all so much!!

Typedesigner · December 10

@John Hudson For your information, in the UK, but also in Germany, Austria, etc., the Annual reports of limited companies are publicly accessible online for everyone!

company information, for example registered address and date of incorporation
current and resigned officers
document images
mortgage charge data
previous company names
insolvency information

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house

John Hudson · December 10

Live and learn... it seems BC is moving towards a similar kind of system. At the moment, we only have to file annual reports with our lawyers, but a new business registry is being created.

Nadine Chahine · December 11

I remember hearing about foundries who price based on turnover (revenue) but haven't come across one so far. Anyone knows one please? I've seen an example where the foundry says that licensing is based on revenue but they actually use employee number as a metric of measurement. Is there any foundry out there that uses actually revenue figures as a metric?

Side observation, I'm a bit surprised by the proportion of foundries that are charging by number of employees. It's bigger than I expected when I started this research. We should also have a conversation as a community about licenses that combine all usages, and perhaps survey customers? Are they happy with the simpler license?

John Hudson · December 11

I’m pretty sure customers are happy with a comprehensive use license. I am sure they’re even happier with a libre license.

I would be interested to see how the total $ amounts compare between comprehensive licensing based on employee quantity vs usage-based rights licensing. My guess is that the comprehensive licensing comes in significantly cheaper for customers a lot of the time.

James Hultquist-Todd · December 11

Nadine Chahine said:

I remember hearing about foundries who price based on turnover (revenue) but haven't come across one so far. Anyone knows one please? I've seen an example where the foundry says that licensing is based on revenue but they actually use employee number as a metric of measurement. Is there any foundry out there that uses actually revenue figures as a metric?

We use revenue instead of employees (for a number of reasons). It's been working well for us in cutting down licensing confusion and simplifying the licensing process. We can also independently verify whether a company purchased the correct license if they are publicly traded.

John Hudson · December 11

James, are all your licenses one-time-payments, or are any annual? Is the revenue-based pricing based on just the previous financial year?

Nadine Chahine · December 11

Thank you, James! Will take a look

Nadine Chahine · December 12

John Hudson said:

James, are all your licenses one-time-payments, or are any annual? Is the revenue-based pricing based on just the previous financial year?

Looks like it's perpetual and based on last 12 months or fiscal year:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5019405/uploads/editor/sa/i6mk875fgwkl.png

So this is the only model I've found so far that is based on revenue. I like the idea of a simple license, to reduce headaches for clients. This one is perpetual and allows for revenue growth without any penalties (if you check its EULA). There's pros and cons to this approach: Pro; you reward startups who invest in fonts early on in their growth and they don't have to come back to get more licenses if revenue jumps (it's nice for them, easier to sell). Cons; you lose out on potential income if they grow a lot. For large and well established brands with relatively stable income it should be ok. My preference for this kind of model is to go annual or for a 3- or 5-year term.

The good thing with JTD is that he also offers traditional licenses, so he is in a unique position to know how clients are responding to this model. Very interesting case study if there ever is one!

James, if you are ever willing to speak publicly about this experience please let me know. Would be great to host a panel and to discuss the various models.

bojjoe · December 12

Both myself and the foundries i work with use proportional per-company-size pricing. It's a little less invasive than asking for their revenue, and companies are more willing to share this information (or have it already publicly available) BUT a lot of enforcing is still necessary as folks just pick the cheapest license (*faepalm*).

PS. I'm using Fontdue which is i think the cart screenshotted just above, the terms are completely customizable.

James Hultquist-Todd · December 12

I'm glad there's interest in a talk! I've been thinking about putting one together now that I have a year and a half of data running both the simple license and the traditional licenses side by side.

Regarding the invasiveness of asking for revenue, that's one of the reasons why the gaps between tiers are intentionally large; it's pretty easy to guess if a business is a $10 million dollar or $50 million dollar a year operation.

The reason we didn't go with employees is we found it too variable and unrepresentative of different markets. A lot of industries have seasonal employment so do you ask for how many employees they have at that moment? Or how many they have on average over a year? There's also the discrepancy that a 10-employee business in Silicon Valley looks very different from a 10-employee restaurant in Des Moines.

So far, without looking at the data, I know we've sold at every tier and I would guess our sales are pretty much a 50/50 split between traditional and simple licenses.

As Nadine said, running it as a 3–5 year license instead of perpetual would probably make sense but the idea here was to give small and medium-sized businesses a worry-free way to license type without fear that they'll have to run it past a lawyer or worry about an audit or lawsuit. Basically, it's our way of answering Monotypes scare tactics and reassuring potential clients that font buying doesn't need to be intimidating.
EDIT: Yes, we use Fontdue for our store and it's been great!

Nadine Chahine · December 12

James Hultquist-Todd said:

I'm glad there's interest in a talk! I've been thinking about putting one together now that I have a year and a half of data running both the simple license and the traditional licenses side by side.
...
As Nadine said, running it as a 3–5 year license instead of perpetual would probably make sense but the idea here was to give small and medium-sized businesses a worry-free way to license type without fear that they'll have to run it past a lawyer or worry about an audit or lawsuit.

Great let's organise something! Btw you can always make the lower tiers perpetual and the higher tiers annual. Or stipulate that if they go over their tier they have to come back and get an upgrade, the same way we do with the usual desktop/web licenses. You will probably never need to enforce it except if one gets super big.

Igor Freiberger · December 13

Some additional suggestions for the top 50 based on… well, no objective criteria, just my own perception of importance due to their releases:

James Puckett · December 14

I would add Typodermic and Device. Both have hundreds of typefaces that are used all over the place. Individually most of them aren’t popular, but the sum total of use those foundries get is huge.

satya · December 14

While we’ve been offering recurring Corporate Licenses through ITF to large organizations for several years now, we’ve recently decided to transition away from lifetime licenses altogether. This change will go live on ITF’s upcoming new website, but the updated model is already available on our newly launched, separate type foundry: https://www.bezier.com/

The prices for each license are still calculated based on traditional media usage, which we believe remains the most reliable method. However, we now offer only three core licenses: Studio, Corporate Limited, and Corporate Unlimited.

Studio:

This basic license is primarily designed for creators, such as independent designers, studios, and design agencies. It is the only lifetime license we offer, but it comes with limited media types and quantities to meet the typical needs of creators with smaller-scale usage.

Corporate Limited:

This license is tailored for small to mid-sized organizations. It's highly configurable, allowing companies to select specific media types, adjust quantities, and pay only for what they need. It’s a recurring license available for 1, 2, 3, or 5-year terms, with significant volume discounts for longer commitments.

Corporate Unlimited:

As the name suggests, this license offers unlimited, unrestricted usage across all media types with absolutely no limitations. Like Corporate Limited, it's available for 1, 2, 3, or 5-year terms, but it also includes several valuable benefits, including free font modifications, font renaming, font swapping, and a custom EULA. Nearly all of our large clients choose this license because it offers complete freedom, is hassle-free, and easy to manage.

You can check out the licensing model and see how it works in real-time at Bezier.com

What are the top 50 foundries today?

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