Universal Images Group (UIG) has now opened an office in New York. This is in addition to its offices in Chicago, USA; Rome, Italy and Chelmsford in the UK. The business has achieved triple digit revenue growth through distribution and electronic publishing in the past year and it has become essential to provide a further production & editing center in USA. UIG had acquired last summer the business of Omni Photos, an educational photo agency based in New York City. It has now completed the transfer of the digital assets into its database (for global representation) and has now added over 50 new photographers and artists to its roster of contributors.
UIG has appointed Lindsey Nicholson, Editorial Director for North America. Lindsey, based in New York, will manage all content from North American Image Providers as well as digitized images from all photographers, artists, illustrators and other contributors from around the world.
Lindsey was formerly with Jupiter Images where she managed & produced images for their Thinkstock & Creatas brands. She previously worked as Director of Photography at a number of stock houses in the industry including; The Stock Market Photo Agency (now part of Corbis); Index Stock Imagery (now part of Photolibrary/Getty), and WireImage (now part of Getty) .
“Lindsey brings 25 years of incredible industry experience to UIG and her rapport, knowledge of and understanding of content requirements and with photographers will help us to add further premium picture assets for representation” said George Sinclair, the founder and Executive Director of the Virtual Picture Desk (their Content Management Facilities business in 2002) and Universal Images Group (the global distribution business in 2008).
UIG currently has over 850,000 rights managed premium images in its distribution database and over 3.2 million educational images for the electronic publishing and online education market. UIG is the exclusive provider of still and video content for Britannica’s Image Quest subscription services for schools, colleges, universities and public libraries.
To maintain the company’s revenue growth, which will more than double again in 2012 from last year, UIG has centralized the management of its distribution network into one location in USA, and its technology center in Melbourne, Australia utilizing cloud-computing technology for storage and management of its databases, which will grow to 15 terabytes for content in the coming year.
UIG has appointed Danny Russelman Director of Distributor Sales and Operations. He is also based in New York. Danny brings 18 years of industry experience in sales, management and operational roles with Photolibrary, Index Stock and Peter Arnold.
In addition to the content from photographers, artists and illustrators, UIG represents the images of De Agostini Editore, Mondadori, Leemage, The Granger Collection, and the Wellcome Trust, the National Portrait Gallery (UK), Encyclopaedia Britannica, DK Images, the National Geographic Society plus pictures from many museums, galleries and historic archives. UIG has entered into many new agreements in this year to date, and now also represent Amana Images japan, Auscape Australia, PYMCA, Visions of America, the Japan Travel Bureau, India Pictures, Superstock Fine Art, Alinari Archives, Photoshot Nature, Werner Forman and The British Library.
”The continued growth in our distribution database now allows us to work with global partners in vertical markets such as online education, electronic publishing & merchandizing and with international specialist agents for editorial, vintage and educational content” stated George Sinclair. For further information please contact:
Executive Director
TFvapynve@ICQPbec.pbz; in Chicago Telephone: (001) 917 209 0867
Lindsey Nicholson, Editorial Director in USA, email
YAvpubyfba@Havirefnyvzntrftebhc.pbz; Telephone: (001) 917 744 5682
Danny Russelman, Director of Distributor Sales & Operations, contact
QEhffryzna@Havirefnyvzntrftebhc.pbz; Telephone: (001) 516 808 5503
Matthew Pope, European Content Director based in the UK, email
ZCbcr@ICQPbec.pbz; Telephone; (044) (0) 203 239 4435 or (044) (0) 7961 094182