Acquisitions
IIn August of 2011
Arius3D Corp made an
offer to purchase Masterfile for $21.4 million in a bid to expand into the 2D market. Since then Arius3D has been trying to raise the financing necessary to close the deal. Several tentative closing dates have passed, the last being March 31, 2012, and it has now been announced that the deal “will not close,” and the offer to purchase is not being extended.
Online stock photography agency
Fotolia has acquired
Wilogo.com, a thriving community for design crowdsourcing. The community, founded in 2006, has been connecting companies in need of design work with a community of people willing to take on the job. Wilogo positions itself as a full service crowdsourced design community able to accommodate most marketing and branding requirements of client companies. Designers who participate have expertise in both print and web design.
Robert Harding World Imagery
www.robertharding.com, a travel and global imagery specialist agency has acquired
Specialist Stock. Specialist Stock is a comprehensive collection of environmental and nature themed still photos and footage that is regularly licensed to international broadcasters, publications and the education sector.
Imagestate Media Ltd and Imagestate Media Partners Ltd has ceased
trading through its website and as of February 1, 2012 has entered
Administration. The assets of the above companies have been acquired by a
new investor. The ongoing business of Imagestate will be managed by
Impact Photos. Heritage Images will operate separately.
Cordón Press (
www.cordonpress.com), Spain’s number one editorial agency, has just
announced the acquisition of Latinstock Spain (
www.latinstock.es) for an undisclosed amount.
Design Pics Inc., has acquired of
First Light Associated Photographers Ltd., a Canadian based photo agency. The agency was originally founded in 1984 by Pierre Guevremont, Ron Watts and Brian Milne. First Light has been based in Toronto. Design Pics is located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Design Pics Inc., headquartered in Edmonton, Canada announces the acquisition of
Pacific Stock, a Hawaii based photo agency. The agency was originally founded in 1987 by Barbara Brundage.
Corbis has announced that it will be closing its entire Calgary operation at the beginning of 2012. The "planned office closure" will consolidate all of the company’s Technology and Marketing activities in Seattle. Corbis is expecting to add technology and marketing positions to the Seattle headquarters. Veer will continue to operate as a separate brand. It is unclear whether any of the personnel currently working on the Veer brand will move to Seattle.
Arius3D Corp plans to buy
Masterfile Corp. for $21.4 million, in a bid to expand into the traditional 2D market. Under the deal's terms, full consideration will be paid in cash, unless Masterfile opts to receive $12 million of the purchase price in stock. The Masterfile portion of the business will continue to operate under its current brand name and under the direction of Steve Pigeon, founder and president.
Corbis Images has acquired
Splash News for an undisclosed amount. From its Los Angeles base Splash provides candid celebrity photography and video content to the world’s premiere print, online and broadcast media distributors of entertainment news.
Ingram Image has entered into a binding agreement to acquire the
goodwill and trading assets of Reflex Stock. Reflex offers a unique mix
of visual content, which currently comprises 10 million images.
Reflexstock.com offers traditional Premium quality Royalty Free and
Rights Managed content alongside Budget Royalty Free, MicroPrice Images
and a subscription service. Ingram also acquires Reflex’s successful
industry Design Blog.
Photographers are trying to assess how much the acquisition of PhotoLibrary will add to Getty’s gross revenue and what impact it might have on Getty’s overall control of the stock photo market. I estimate that gross 2010 revenue for still photo licensing worldwide was about $1.45 billion. Over the years I have defined the “stock photo market” as including the licensing of still photos and illustrations, but not footage or any of the auxiliary activities that Getty, Corbis and some other companies are involved in. I also include in my gross figure revenue generated by the picture divisions of AP, Reuters, AFP, etc. and of course the editorial division of Getty Images.
According to Tech Crunch
Getty Images has acquired competitor
The Photolibrary Group. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed and as of this writing no additional information is available on the Getty web site.
Getty Images has announced that it has acquired PicScout, a leader in
identifying image use, metadata and licensing information on the web.
Founded in 2002 by Offir Gutelzon and Eyal Gura the company is based in
Herzliya, Israel and has 60 employees. The PicScout brand will remain,
and the R&D team is expected to remain in Israel.
The Image Works stock photography agency (http://www.theimageworks.com)
has announced the addition of the Press Association collection to its
archive. Press Association has one of the most extensive collections of
UK news, sports and entertainment images in the world, dating back to
1860.
The Image Works has announced
the addition of imagery from Green Stock Media to its archive. This
collection visually promotes a broad spectrum of environmental and
sustainability issues with an extensive array of imagery representing
environmental problems, contemporary ecological solutions, and the
beauty and importance of nature.
Corbis Images (
www.corbisimages.com), has entered into a partnership with ZUMA Press (
http://www.zumapress.com), an independent press agency and wire services capturing news and documentary images.
On Thursday, Toronto-based Mastefile acquired Norwegian microstock Crestock. Both companies announced the deal late on Friday, without disclosing financial details.
Citizen journalism Web site Scoopt will not make it to its fourth birthday. Established by Scottish duo Kyle and Jill MacRae in July 2005, Scoopt became Getty Images' property in March 2007 and will cease to exist March 2009.
This chart provides a list of the major sellers of stock photography worldwide. The list is broken up into three separate groups, those with revenue in excess of $20 million, those with revenue between $5 and $20 million and those with revenue between $1 and $5 million.
This chart provides a list of the stock agencies Getty has acquired since its founding in 1995.
Several photo brands are rumored to be quietly offering their collections to selected buyers, but so far there seems to be very little interest from the buyer side.
In the last few years, the stock photo industry has experienced significant consolidation. The chart below lists 34 existing companies that have acquired a total of 197 agencies. In general, fewer large companies are controlling the industry as middle-sized and small companies disappear.
Our recent coverage of Veer was unexpectedly timely, given today's announcement of Corbis acquiring the Canada-based stock-image retailer and type foundry for an undisclosed sum. Though this purchase is unlikely to be in the vicinity of the failed Getty/Jupitermedia deal valued at about $350 million, the alliance of Veer and Corbis may still have a rather significant effect on the industry.