Could Canva buy Redbubble (ASX: RBL)?

Canva.com, the leader in graphic design tools, sits at the core of the creative economy. Casual individual designs and serious design corporate teams use Canva for everything design-related. Canva, as the content creation layer, owns the surface of creative image expression.

Hypothetical: Canva could acquire Redbubble, the leading marketplace for independent creators to go deeper into the intersection between creative expression and commerce.

Redbubble isn’t just a marketplace with more web traffic than all its competitors combined (second only to Etsy), but one that provides the necessary inroads to own the creator economy, from content creation, to monetization. I have written about Redbubble’s business model in depth here.

Redbubble’s unique position comes from the ease of which Redbubble artists can transition the chasm between graphic creation and graphic monetization. In less than a minute, a user may upload a graphic, have it superimposed upon a range of products (from shirts, to mugs, to stickers), set a commission, and activate these products in a personal shop on Redbubble, ready to be purchased. Customers may discover the creators products through the general Redbubble search function or through direct links to the creator’s mini-shop. When an order is placed, Redbubble produces the product and drop-ships directly to the customer.

Creators make money simply by creating and uploading graphics, with the platform owning product suggestions, e-commerce discovery…