Oscar Zhao & Yves Béhar: “You had me at nihao."
Late yesterday afternoon, we learned that Beijing’s BlueFocus Communication Group will be taking a majority stake in fuseproject, Yves Béhar’s design firm. This marks the growing agency’s first foray into the States; it first dipped its toes into Western waters in April of last year, with a 20% stake in Huntsworth PR group, followed by taking a majority stake in We Are Social (both based in the UK). Now, the Financial Times reports that “BlueFocus will pay $46.7m in cash for 75 per cent of Fuseproject, to be paid out over several years depending on performance." (Figures on the agency’s net worth and remarkable ascendancy are available here.)
If fuseproject, of Jawbone, Sodastream and Ouya fame, is a household name in the design world, we (like most of you) hadn’t heard of BlueFocus prior to yesterday’s announcement. Make no mistake, they are by all accounts a juggernaut, not just among native Chinese companies but on the world stage as well. Founded by Oscar Zhao in 1996, BlueFocus currently employs some2,800 people—it is reportedly the biggest PR agency in the world—and Béhar’s 75-person team, will join the ranks of the ~700 others at companies in which BlueFocus has a majority stake. fuseproject will continue to operate independently; while its multidisciplinary portfolio and services (i.e. rebranding Paypal) may well complement and align with BlueFocus’s long-term goals, the San Francisco-based company is ostensibly the first industrial design consultancy in the Chinese company’s highly diversified holdings.
Contrary to alarming AQI reports, BlueFocus invites blue-sky thinking at their Beijing headquarters (via Baidu maps)
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