Maybe just my own perception, but it seems themes are dying out. Are most folks going to Foundation, Foundry or what ?
…Kenny
I think you are generally correct. New themes are still being created, but certainly not at the fast-paced rate they were done about 5 years ago. There’s still a place for themes, just not as high a demand as previously. My guess is themes will continue for a number of years to come as they serve a great purpose for several folks.
OTOH Foundry and Foundation have really expanded what intermediate and advanced users can do. So this is also not a surprise. This has been a great development for RW.
There’s a small but growing tertiary market: people who make projects with Foundation or Foundry. In turn this allows users to more quickly understand and use nicely designed projects that take advantage of these two themeless themes. I’d guess this market will continue to grow.
Stack development still seems very strong. So in general it seems RW still has a strong base of users.
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True, unless its a unique design, i stop buying themes… just buy stacks now
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I’m using a theme for a community project that I’ll be involved in. It is unpaid work and I have design control over things, so I don’t mind responding with change requests by saying that I’m using a theme that has design limitations. I was able to get a fairly polished looking site out in a short amount of time, so it worked in that instance.
However, if I present something and the client likes it but wants to a small change that the theme doesn’t allow, having to say “sorry the theme doesn’t allow this” is pretty unsatisfying…
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While I’ve built my last four or five sites with Foundation, the current project uses Weaverthemes Corp and I quite like having the design constraints that it imposes on me. Freeform themes are terrific though and I’m probably going to be re-doing a couple of current sites using Foundry before the end of the year to experiment with all the stuff that’s in the Potion Pack Adam announced about a month ago. Looks fab.
There’s also been some consolidation - people like Henk and Seydesign, bowing out and having their themes taken on by Themeflood - so there are fewer developers. That said, Nick Cates just released an excellent-looking new theme which comes with a selection of pre-built designs, something I’ve not seen since Multithemes was doing it a few years back.
All in all, I think the RW theme world is in good shape. And as for Stacks, well…
All we need now is a simple store that users can update themeselves that doesn’t attract any ongoing monthly fees! 
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Ha, that’s the theme I’m using in my example above. It’s been very user-friendly to work with and, as I said above, suits my needs for this project.
Also agree that there’s a e-commerce void that could be filled!
I don’t think themes are dying out. I have a design I’ve started working on. I usually have a theme or two in the works. Some of them see the light of day, others never get released. But I don’t think themes are going anywhere, IMHO.
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If the theme is good I am willing to buy… even as Foundation User. Sometimes its faster to serve a customer with a pre-built theme.
I think Nick Cates themes offer something special. I use Foundation and Foundry for most of my work but they are more labour intensive and you can’t beat a decent theme for getting a website out there quickly!
I have just re-built this site for a client using Nick Cates Marvel theme.
http://www.rjcivilconstruction.co.nz
It uses Easy CMS for most of the text and images plus an Armadillo blog and took around a day to do.
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Interesting discussion! I think there will always be a place for both themes, pre-made project files etc. It all depends on the budget/scope of the website. I built a website in 2013 with a theme that still looks really fresh (in my eyes anyway) and works really well. Have done small updates for the client during the years, the biggest one was done recently when Pagelime got sold. I changed in a couple of places to Armadillo, works really well.
http://ceric.se/
I prefer building from scratch with Foundation, haven’t tried out Foundry yet but it looks really promising 
Stuffy - that’s a really nice theme.
Rob
Have you got a link? I’d be interested to see what you did with it.
I really like Corp but I’m struggling to get the desktop nav to stick at the top of the page when I’m also using EC1 above it for phone numbers etc. It behaves a bit peculiarly.
A classic theme! indeed
Sent you link in a pm