MicrostockGroup

Long standing macro agency. Good content.

They bought Crestock a while ago.

There are hundreds of great macro sites out there that most of us haven't heard before.

they have been bought for 21,4 million dollars by Arius3D Corp just a couple of weeks ago.

How bizarre...

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?ticker=LZR:CN
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Arius3D-Acquire-Masterfile-iw-2266843772.html?x=0

A loss making company is raising funds to buy another whose revenues have fallen by a fifth. Because they believe people don't want static 2D content anymore, they want interactive 3D content? Hmm... is anyone here buying that? I find it more interesting that the mysterious Financing Partner involved is seeking distribution services from Masterfile. To distribute what, toasters? Wholly owned ones? ;-)

Yep, I bought a couple of images from them years ago, best match* (before microstock). I've come across their name now and again recently.

edit: I wrote the letters b and m and it auto corrected to best match. 

After Crestock was acquired by Masterfile, it become worse than ever. These macro agencies have some kind of marketing ideas that doesn't work anymore. Their prices are too high, they live in the past.
After the purchase, Crestock turned into a very selective agency with stupid reasons, the result was a huge drop of earnings and a lot of contributors ending their relationship whit the agency. Nowadays I'm returning from time to time and read the forums. It seems to me that they are happy to close everyone's account and let him/her go. The admin is ready to answer anything that leads into the fact that you are stupid/don't understand/don't have/etc. the right collection of images that they want. It doesn't matter for a second what sells at the other places.

Your description sound exactly like iStockphoto's current status. I wonder if Lobo used to work there.....

Well this is exactly the troubles with macros, they live in the past, prices are way too high, etc. Although their editing of pics, are far superior to the micros.

Personally I had good feelings about CRE. At the beginning uploading was really fast, they were extra-responisve, fast approvals, etc. like every other agency that starts. After several months I had more revenue than at BigStock, CanStockPhoto, 123rf, etc., then they started to be extra-selective with no logic behind. Nowadays my sales are around $5-10 per month.
After reading hundreds of forum posts and contacting support a lot of times, my conclusion was that they may said to editors: "Don't accept everything from the photographers, because then they will start to upload a lot of crap... By being extra-selective, they also will become extra selective with their shots/themes" (Note that this is my own personal conclusion). CRE only forgot the fact that there are a lot of other, similarly-aged agencies who may offer to photographers what CRE don't. Good examples are CanStock, DepositPhotos, etc. The result: agencies CanStockPhoto and DP has a fresh, fast-growing image bank, even compared to the big 4.

Yes I've seen interview with some dude from Masterfile, just before they bought Crestock I think, he came across and a "macro" snob and gave an impression they have no clue what really was happening in this industry. No wonder their Crestock purchase was a disaster - they totally missed the concept of micro, which is selling A LOT of images that have mass appeal. You can't make money selling small amount of "special" images at micro prices, that's insane, but that's what they were trying to do. I wish someone else bought Crestock, they were actually starting to show promise....  So they may be old and were respectable in old times I suppose (they are Toronto based btw), but it looks like theirs is the case when the management was too rigid to adjust to new trends.