Acquisitions

Everyone knows there has been a lot of consolidation in the industry. Many brands that used to be well known have disappeared completely. A few like Stone and Image Bank are still technically brands under the Getty umbrella, but the character of such brands has changed. The general consensus is that once a brand is acquired and consolidated into a larger collection buyers quickly migrate to searching the larger collection and seldom, if ever, search in the old brand's smaller collection, even if they have the opportunity to do so.

Keeping track of what happened to the old names is often difficult and the list below is my attempt to sort out who owns what now. The column on the left is the current parent company. The middle column is those brands that were acquired by the parent and the column on the right is companies that were first acquired by the company in the middle company before later becoming part of the current parent. In some cases such as Scanpix and Pressens Bild the consolidation was a merger of equals, but it probably will not be long before one name will be lost to history.

In general fewer and fewer large companies are controlling the industry. The middle sized companies are disappearing as they are acquired and the gap between large and small is getting bigger making it that much harder for the small companies to survive.

The following are some of the ways (but not a complete list) that acquisitions have tended to negatively impact photographers. For the most part there is little a photographer can do to prevent these problems from occurring, but recognizing them is the first step to developing a strategy to deal in the future with this new business reality.

• Those who work for the companies that were acquired are finding it harder and harder to get new images accepted because the new parent has too many to choose from.

  
  
  

• Many of the less productive photographers who previously worked for the acquired brands are being dumped as the companies try to reduce the number of photographers they represent.
• Many of the images the previous companies represented have been taking out of the market by the new parent including images that were generating significant revenue and images that do not age given the nature of their subject matter.

• The reduction of the middle ground has made it harder for many photographers to place their images where they can be seen. The big distributors won't accept them and the little distributors tend not to reach enough customers to generate a reasonable amount of income for the photographer.

• Integration into new accounting systems often result in delayed and inaccurate payments for months, and in some cases years before all the old data is fully integrated into the new system.

• The standards for "accepted images" have been raised increasing the production costs for the photographers.

  
  
  

• The model and property release requirements have become much more stringent taking many images that might have been marketable in the past out of the new market.

• Certain types of "street" and "candid" photography that was the source of much variety of offering and a large amount of use in the past have become virtually unmarketable do to the impossibility of obtaining adequate model releases.

While there seems to be less and less of any size or significance left to acquire it also seems clear that the acquisition binge will continue.

Acquisitions