Callaway Digital Arts (www.callaway.com), a revolutionary publisher of iPad apps of unique quality and beauty, today announced a partnership with Martha Stewart to bring cookie lovers a visually delicious, interactive cooking app just in time for the holidays, Martha Stewart Makes Cookies for iPad. The company also announced $6 million in Series A financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ iFund™. Ram Shriram, founder of Sherpalo Ventures and a founding board member of Google, Inc., and Mark Pincus, founder and CEO of Zynga, creators of online social games such as FarmVille, also participated in the round.
“Callaway Digital Arts is one of the very few interactive publishers to fully understand and exploit the iPad’s transformative capabilities as a publishing platform,” said John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “Callaway stands out as a leader for its artistically beautiful and addictive iPad apps, as well as the pipeline of high-quality content owners it has lined up as partners.”
Callaway Digital Arts is an interactive publisher bringing the beauty and quality consumers have grown to love from high-end print publishing to the iPad with visually arresting children’s and lifestyle apps. CDA was spun out from multimedia publisher Callaway Arts & Entertainment earlier this year to take advantage of the iPad’s breakthrough capabilities as a publishing platform. The company is already known for its enormously successful applications based on the Miss Spider series of children’s books, Miss Spider’s Tea Party (for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch) and Miss Spider’s Bedtime Story (for the iPad).Callaway’s in-house production studio brings talented storytellers, digital artists, and interactive designers together to create unforgettable apps for people of all ages.
CDA is partnering with Martha Stewart to extend her brand further into the digital realm. The first iPad app to come out of the partnership, Martha Stewart Makes Cookies, is available in the Apple App Store today. An indispensable baking resource, the app includes instructional videos, baking tips, packaging ideas, kitchen timers, shopping lists, sharing options, and an array of search features for cookie lovers everywhere. CDA will announce several more high-profile content partnerships for the iPad in coming months.
Martha Stewart, Founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, noted: “We had a wonderful experience working with Callaway Digital Arts on our Martha Stewart Makes Cookies app. The CDA team did a fabulous job incorporating Martha Stewart Living ‘s complex and illustrated editorial content into a provocative, understandable, useful, and inspiring application that is unlike any other. We’re looking forward to working with them to develop additional apps that will further engage and expand our audience.”
“Callaway’s partnership with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers will further our mission of uniting the world of deep, immersive, and high-caliber content with the revolutionary technology coming out of Silicon Valley,” said Callaway Digital Arts Chairman and Chief Creative Officer Nicholas Callaway. “We are building out our studios in New York and San Francisco simultaneously. We have a three-part content strategy: forging partnerships with great publishers and brands like Martha Stewart, nurturing the storytellers of the future, and expanding our portfolio of intellectual property.”
Prior to launching Callaway Digital Arts, Mr. Callaway founded Callaway Arts & Entertainment (CAE), which over the course of thirty years has published some of the most highly acclaimed and lavishly produced books of our time with figures such as Madonna, David Kirk, and Irving Penn. In 2010, Mr. Callaway established Callaway Digital Arts with longtime colleague and friend John Lee, founder of Learning Curve International and a driving force behind global brands like Thomas and Friends™ Wooden Railway Line and the Lamaze® Development System. The Learning Curve brand reached revenues of more than $400 million with its award-winning developmental toys and books designed to inspire creative, imaginative play for children of all ages. Callaway Arts & Entertainment will continue to operate independently of Callaway Digital Arts.