The Hamburg, Germany-based Avenue Images has launched a budget-image platform,
Petit Price. Though Avenue is calling this a microstock venture, there are notable differences.
First is in the price point. Petit Price images range in cost from around €5 to €50. This is closer to the budget lines of traditional agencies, such as Getty's Valueline, than the pricing of micro-payment leaders. For example, iStockphoto currently charges less than a third of Petit Price: The largest image at iStock now costs under $20 (15 credits), though prices are going up next month. In addition, newer micro-sites like Lucky Oliver and SnapVillage are experimenting with higher and user-defined pricing structures.
The second difference is in the business model: Petit Price is not a community-driven business. Instead of crowd-sourcing, Avenue Images is extending its primary role as a distributor into the microstock space. It launched with over 100,000 images from a third party, Panther Media. Avenue Images founder, president and CEO Joachim Koutzky says, "For us it is a good test to get a feeling for the microstock market."
Koutzky already knows there is a traditional royalty-free market in Germany. Formerly a CEO of Mauritius and director of Photononstop, Koutzky founded Avenue Images in 2003. The distributor currently represents a number of American and European royalty-free brands, including Photodisc, Image Source and Denkou. It also handles rights-managed Index Stock imagery in the German market.