a21 launches Media Magnet micro-payment stock photography site
Jacksonville Florida based, a21, the parent company of SuperStock, and ArtSelect, has announced the launch of a new micro-payment/mid-stock site called Media Magnet. The new site features a mix of royalty-free content from both commercial image collections and user-generated micro-stock photography. The company states that MediaMagnet’s concept is simple: relevant, fresh content and a simplified search at affordable pricing.
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A21 Group, which owns the stock image licensing business, Superstock and the consumer wall-art business, ArtSelect, released its results for the full year ended 2007 showing improved operating performance in the face of flat revenue. Gross revenue remained relatively flat on an annualized basis for 2007, but gross and operating margins improved, thanks to restructuring initiatives taken in 2007. Despite these efforts, however, the company remains in the red, though losses have declined.
In order to improve efficiency, A21 Superstock has announced it will consolidate its operations by closing the ArtSelect offices in Fairfield, Iowa and moving its administrative and business support departments to the Superstock’s head offices in Jacksonville, Florida. According to the company’s CFO, Tom Costanza, the merging of the offices should save $1MM per year.
ArtSelect, the A21 division that sells fine art to consumers and sister company to Superstock, hopes to expand the market for its product by offering it as a way to improve the view of cubicle-bound office workers. For many white-collar employees, the lowly cubicle epitomizes a dreary office existence and presents a small-space decorating problem. Now, in large part using imagery from Superstock, ArtSelect believes it has a solution that not only cheers up one's work space, but in so doing, also improves worker productivity.
Certain friends who attended CEPIC conference in Florence earlier this month tell me the issue of micro-stock put a cloud over the whole affair. Of course, those comments did not come from my friends among micro-stock company personnel, whose outlooks remain decidedly sunny. I wonder, though, whether the old guard can fairly blame micro-stock for the commercial stock photo industry’s troubled outlook. Naturally, the micro-stock model can only have a detrimental effect on the traditional business, over-all. But what if micro-stock never happened? Would the industry truly be much better off? I doubt it.
The A21 Group, owners of Superstock and ArtSelect, among other brands, have appointed Bruce Slywka to the position of Vice President of Sales and Marketing, reporting directly to CEO John Ferguson. In this newly created position at A21, Slywka will lead the company’s worldwide sales and marketing efforts for both the stock photo licensing and online consumer art and framing divisions.
a21’s Fairfield Iowa based, ArtSelect, has announced the launch of a new Custom Frame shop. ArtSelect is one of the leading purveyors of wall décor and fine art prints online with more than $12 million in revenue for 2005. The new online custom frame shop will allow consumers to quickly create custom pieces from the site's library of more than 50,000 images, 80 mats, and 150 frame styles.
