[duopixel]

Using a downloadable theme on your product is somewhat akin to using Wordpress to program your web app. The compromises will be dictated by the CMS/Theme, instead of you being able to call the shots

Say you need a tool to reorder categories. You know the best way to do this would be with drag and drop, but the theme only has table views! So you place an "order" field in a table view and hope for the best.

Then you realize that having a line chart for displaying open cases in a bug tracker is stupid, but it's the only view you have so you stick with it.

All these little compromises form an incredibly expensive form of technical debt, and pretty soon you have a product that users wouldn't touch with a stick. It's better to have an ugly product that works well than a pretty product that's a pain to use.

[semanticist]

Or you use the base styling to create whatever custom widgets you happen to need. The kind of themes I'd use in this situation give you reusable UI components and basic layouts that you can modify to your specific needs while still retaining consistency across the app.

My experience has been that a bootstrapping startup cannot afford to keep a designer on staff, and as a developer I'd much rather work with template components that are designed to be reused and moved around than a fixed design delivered by a contract designer that's not as flexible.

[Wolf_Larsen]

You are assuming that the programmer uses the theme's markup. I buy themes for their PSD and mark it up myself.

[trustfundbaby]

Say you need a tool to reorder categories. You know the best way to do this would be with drag and drop, but the theme only has table views! So you place an "order" field in a table view and hope for the best.

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very good point, I've been bitten by this one before