Alamy Images launches international distribution network
Leading image portal expands into Europe and Asia Pacific
17th March 2003
Alamy Images, a leading provider of specialist and general imagery from the world's major picture agencies and photographers, announced today that it has signed deals with distributors to help it market and sell its collections internationally. Alamy material will now be available from local Alamy partners worldwide, as well as directly from alamy.com. These new partners will be able to exploit the company's range of unusual, global material to meet their customers' specific local needs.
"Having firmly established ourselves in the UK and US, we're already attracting purchasers from around the world thanks to our extensive collection of culturally-specific material which differs from the usual, run-of-the mill, US-centric stock photography," said James West, CEO of Alamy Images. "However, although we're an online brand, we feel it's important to complement our offering with strong, local support for our customers. It's also essential that our contributors' material is promoted appropriately to each market. This is why we have decided to link up with best-of-breed distributors in each country."
The first phase of Alamy's international expansion is supported by custom-built technology, the Alamy Distribution Tool, which allows the distributors to service customers independently of Alamy. The Alamy Distribution Tool holds tens of thousands of images from Alamy contributors who have signed up to the distribution scheme. This online system gives distributors speedy access to the cream of images from Alamy and allows them to offer images to end users according to their own distribution model.
"Alamy's diverse collection of high quality images and their approach to customer service has won them many fans in the UK and US, and we look forward to helping them replicate this success in Germany," commented Michi Luigs of Strandperle. "There is more demand than ever for unusual and unique stock photography and we anticipate demand will be high for Alamy's portfolio."
Distributors signed so far in this first phase include Strandperle (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), ImageSelect (Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland), Font Shop (Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland), Global Images (Sweden), Tri-Scan Pty (Australia, New Zealand), Dom Daniel (CIS including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan), Image Plan (Japan), PhotoPark (Korea), PhotoStock (Poland), Red Dot (Hungary), Panorama (China), ACI Agencia de Fotografia (Spain), and Atri Graphics (Russia).
Alamy is also inviting interested parties from other territories outside of the UK, US and Canada to approach them for consideration.