mmmm exclusivity is delicious

This quote was from another thread, but it comes across like something the traditional guys might have said to photographers trying to break into the business back in 2000, and we all know that nothing stays the same!

Ok It might be delicious for exclusives now at Istock, but the model goes against Getty's own way of doing business, they have inherited the model to get the business and customers which was a very smart move, but they did not design the iStock business model.

I doubt if Getty as a business are really comfortable with the Exclusive Contributor model as it goes against free trade, they could leave it as is, but from my experiences with big companies like Microsoft they sit for a while after aqusition and then slowly bring things in house and change the companies they aquire to refect thier own business model and ethics, a sort of re-branding.

So this is a fake scenario, you have to decide the future of iStock:

If I was in charge of this situation what would I be looking at, the growth is falling and we will not make our projections, I would have to start with cutting costs and streamlining, now I think that for iStock the contributor exclusive served well and was a good tool a few years ago, but the parent business model is 'image set exclusive'.

I would be asking if the contributor exclusive content is a much better model than image set exclusive, and just how much value does it really add to the business for the additional cost, are the exclusive images that much better than non exclusive.

If then found that both products are a comparable quality and content then I would be looking to change things, as we will then be paying to much for a lot of our products.

My thinking would be an isolated apple may be from an exclusive artist but it has no greater value than a non exclusives isolated apple, so why we are paying some suppliers 50% more for the same image quality and content. 

I would need to restructure and clear out the old guard add a few 'yes men', get enough non exclusive quality content to balance the library.

To cut costs I would have to look at the content to see if it all had an added value, then do some gains and losses risk assesments, start to ease out poor non exclusive content to strenghen the brand, then I would start to use the parent companies model alongside the exclusive contributors and open up content from all contributors as 'invited exclusive image sets'.

This then opens up our premium collection and brings in the required images from the high production cost professional photographers that we are trying to attract as they move into microstock, build this exclusive image content from all contributors alongside the library and then turn the screw on the dross.

After a while move all contributors to the same model and have only the invited premium collection and a general library, with all contributors on the same commission structure based on the image quality not the contributor loyalty. 

After all as a business, if we lose a few contributors it is manageable and expected?


David  (sleep tight don't have nightmares)