A New Direction . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
May 24, 2007


Getty Images CEO Jonathan Klein might beg to differ, but the new CEO of CompassMedia thinks the world's largest distributor is –– well –– a little bit old hat.

"Getty Images' business model is obsolete," declared Paul Melcher in a prepared statement released on this date. "CompassMedia's solution will level the playing field by forever changing the way the photo industry does business. I am proud and honored to spearhead this evolution."

Melcher, a photo industry veteran, has been named CEO of CompassMedia, LLC. He most recently worked for Digital Railroad and once was director of North American operations and sales for Hachette Filipacchi Photo Group.

CompassMedia says it will offer image buyers and sellers a number of services, including a new portal called CompassPix, which will aggregate stock photography image previews from a number of suppliers.

The company said it also offers software that enables seamless key wording, searching, purchasing and image management; a database solution; and a web interface program.

The CompassPix web site is under construction, but claims to have lined up a number of contributors, including Magnum; All Medic, a medical publishing company; Cubo Images, an Italian image supplier of food, plants and travel images; and other distributors.

The company says it already has 6 million images from 25 suppliers for CompassPix. It says it has offices in New York, Paris, Germany and Poland. High resolution images remain with the client, the company says.

Though the CompassPix web site is not operational, the business concept is similar to one offered by StockPhotoFinder.com, which aggregates previews from a number of image suppliers. However, unlike StockPhotoFinder, image buyers will be able to license images directly from CompassPix, Melcher said.

"There is absolutely no need to leave the CompassPix site to go fetch the high resolution," Melcher noted. "Our technology taps directly into the participant's image database, so that everything can be done from one location."

Image buyers license images found on StockPhotoFinder from the individual participants that represent the specific images.

 

The CompassPix web site is at: http://www.compasspix.com.

StockPhotoFinder is at: http://www.stockphotofinder.com.