Masterfile Expands into Europe . . .

Stock Asylum Staff Report
September 27, 2005

Having lost its main European connection just ten months ago, Masterfile is taking matters into its own hands, opening new offices in Dusseldorf, London and Milan.

The stock photography company announced that Tomas Speight, former co-CEO of zefa, will head up the new European efforts from offices in Dusseldorf, Germany. Before zefa, Speight managed European operations for the Stock Market photo agency.

Geoff Cannon, executive vice president at Masterfile, said the new offices will start operating at the beginning of 2006, when a previous arrangement with zefa expires.

Masterfile, of Toronto, Canada, found itself without its primary European subdistributor on Jan.1 of this year when Corbis announced it had purchased zefa.

At the time, Speight was named a Corbis' vice president, leading international operations and expansion activities. He left Corbis in April.

Since the purchase, Corbis has integrated the zefa collection into the Corbis web site, though a zefa web site still exists and will continue to license Masterfile images through Dec. 31. Masterfile stopped selling zefa images at the end of May.

Cannon said Masterfile decided to open European offices because, "We didn't think there was a good alternative. We had a strong relationship with zefa. There really wasn't another strong distributor that we could partner with."

Though the new offices will be owned by Masterfile, they are separate companies and will be treated as independent agents, Cannon said.

This is an important distinction for photographers, who typically receive more money when their primary distributor makes a sale. When a subagent licenses an image, the seller takes a significant cut and returns the remainder to the primary distributor. The primary distributor divvies up the rest between itself and the photographer.

In this case, " there will be no change in the way royalties are calculated for our contributing artists," said Cannon, meaning photographers will receive the same percentages they were receiving from zefa sales.

Masterfile soon will hire business, sales, marketing, photographer recruitment, keywording and editing staff in Dusseldorf. Sales professionals will be hired for the London and Milan offices. The company plans to serve the Netherlands with Dutch-speaking staff in Dusseldorf.

"It's very exciting," said Cannon. "It's like anything else. You're getting ready for a big performance and there is a certain level of nerves that you want to harness and put to work."

Besides its Toronto headquarters, Masterfile has North American offices in New York, Chicago and Seattle. The company has subagents in 30 other countries.

 

Masterfile can be found at: http://masterfile.com

zefa is at: http://www.zefaimages.com

Corbis is at: http://www.corbis.com