Interview with Glenn Parker and James Cape of Photolibrary
Sunday, March 30th, 2008The Australian Photolibrary Group has drawn attention to itself in a very short period of time following a number of takeovers: the Anthony Blake Food Collection, the Garden Picture Library, Oxford Scientific, Monsoon and CDI The Image Library. Probably its most spectacular acquisition was New York based Index Stock. What are the Australian company’s plans?visuell: Let’s begin with the latest takeover in your company’s expansion programme and talk about Index Stock. Many people in the industry were surprised at your purchase of this agency in view of the fact that it does not really fit into what has been your acquisition strategy to date – up to now, you have bought small but well-stocked specialist agencies. How does Index Stock, with its more conservative stockfile, fit into this picture? Was the price simply too attractive?
photolibrary: Our strategy in the past has been to principally acquire analogue archives in niche areas, digitise the archive and provide a robust IT platform for the business to grow in their own right plus having the additional benefit of being placed onto photolibrary.com, our generalist website. We have concentrated on the more specialist forms of content as these images have a longer useful life and have a more defensible position in terms of the market. Business and lifestyle images by concept can date quite quickly. Also, they are relatively easy to replicate and in the main are dominated by the numerous royalty free producers that now exist. Typically these sorts of images are used for below the line type advertising and given the huge mass of royalty free images now available it is seen as an easy choice by clients. It is very difficult and unusual for advertising agencies to use stock images with a lifestyle aspect in large above the line campaigns unless timing/budgetary constraints are an issue. Our experience has been that the more specialist images are not just the province of editorial users but are increasingly utilised at the top end of advertising due to their uniqueness and usefulness as backdrops. As I said, lifestyle and business imagery for advertising and design customers is increasingly becoming the home for royalty free if for no other reason than the huge mass of RF images and the ease of replication that exists.
visuell: But what made you take over Index Stock against this background?
photolibrary: In terms of North America, it is by far the largest market for stock photography. We had struggled in the past to find a good partner in the US who could sell all of our content across all subjects (not just the specialities but our own rights managed and royalty free lifestyle). On the other hand, the Index material had been an extremely good revenue source for photolibrary.com not just in editorial but in advertising as well in the various regions in which we represented them (ie such as the United Kingdom, Australia throughout Asia, the subcontinent and the Middle East). Finally, Index had developed a subscription product called Index Open which we thought could be developed further and over time be available via all of our offices, not just North America. Thus the fit for us strategically was good.
visuell: But there’s no doubt quite a lot to do at Index Stock.
photolibrary: The main issue now with Index is to complete our editing programme so that the good saleable images are brought to the fore. In addition we will communicate with the artist community to re-establish lost ties with Index. In all likelihood this will be via our generalist brand, photolibrary.com and our high end brand, Monsoon Images. We are now one of the very few companies with multiple offices around the world so we are now in a position to truly network photographers worldwide.
visuell: When we think about the big series of acquisitions carried out by Getty Images and Corbis, we recall that in some cases these big players had serious difficulties integrating these agencies into the parent company. Like them, you have bought up firms pretty quickly. Is there anything you have been able to learn from the Americans?
photolibrary: We have never had any real difficulties in integration. Our first acquisition was in the UK in October 2002 (the Photographers Library), the next more than 18 months later (Oxford Scientific in May 2004) and the next more than a year after that (Garden Picture Library in June 2005). We learnt a lot from these acquisitions and took our time integrating them. This knowledge has helped us tremendously now in terms of the several we have done over the past six months. Obviously, Index is the largest and will take the most time but we are well down the track on that and are meeting all of our timelines. For example, Photolibrary US is live and we will be starting our marketing programme shortly.
visuell: Could you tell us something about your brand strategy? Up to now, your agencies have been operating under their own labels with their own websites and have not yet been integrated into an umbrella brand. Do you intend to keep things this way?
photolibrary: We take the view that certain customers want a certain type and level of service so we keep the more specialist websites for those customers and also retain the technical knowledge of the staff. This is often a key differentiator, particularly for the specialist editorial markets. However, we do actually sell the brands under one umbrella as well – www.photolibrary.com. This is our generalist website. Photolibrary.com sells to the wider range of audiences whilst the specialist websites retain their own customers and branding. You cannot be everything to everyone and choice makes a difference even if the customer knows or suspects that it is dealing with the same underlying company.
visuell: It’s conspicuous that, apart from the UK, the Photolibrary Group has no offices in Europe but has a presence in many Asian countries, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates. Do these countries have the best growth rates?
photolibrary: Certainly the growth rates in certain parts of Asia are better whilst the middle east and subcontinent are widely known to be growth economic areas so I doubt whether this would be a surprise to anyone. As regards Europe, we have strong relationships in some countries who are doing a great job for us.
visuell: Photolibrary is focusing on stock agencies and keeping out of the news and press business. Does this market not appeal to you?
photolibrary: Yes it is of interest but we still see sustained growth in our market segments for stock images. We are also increasingly seeing an uplift in stock footage. We entered this market via the acquisition of Oxford Scientific Films and are now replicating this product via our main website. In addition, we intend to expand our subscription offering to target this market segment further.
visuell: How is Photolibrary going to develop in the future? What new moves are you planning? Are you going to purchase more agencies?