Brilliantly guided through the turbulent years of the dotcom bust and September 11th, Getty Images was built by two partners, Mark Getty (grandson of J. Paul Getty), and Jonathan Klein (co-founder and CEO) from an analog film based agency, serving the needs of photographic artists, to a corporate empire, spanning the globe and absorbing over half of the world’s market share in the commercial media industry.

Creative Destruction
With prescience, their initiative was born out of the “Creative Destruction” of an industry that was built on film, chemicals and analog photography. They foresaw the power of the burgeoning internet and digital technology that would eventually bring such legends as Polaroid and Kodak to their knees. They absorbed the content of every major stock photo agency and media company, and commanded market share with a combination of quality product, clever marketing and lightening swift moves into complementing business models that built on their strengths and added value for their customers.

Getty Images describes itself as “the world’s leading creator and distributor of still imagery, footage and multi-media products, as well as a recognized provider of other forms of premium digital content, including music. The company targets three customer segments: agency (advertising, marketing, graphic design firms); corporate (in-house communications, advertising, marketing, graphic design) and media (newspapers, broadcast television, film, magazines, and online publishers).

1995: Getty Images Communications takes 80% stake in Tony Stone Images (Quality branding, setting their course in the industry.)

1996: Getty Images acquires Hulton Deutsch Collection for £8.6M (19th and 20th century historic work that allowed them to compete with Corbis images (2nd largest)

1997: Getty Images acquires Liaison for US $9.4M (Gaining a foothold in contemporary news and photojournalism.)

1998: Getty Images acquires PhotoDisc (An investment of foresight into a “royalty free” business model about to take off.)

1998: Getty buys Allsport for £29.4M (Branded Getty for sports imagery.)

1999: Getty Images acquires The Image Bank from Eastman Kodak for US $183M (Contemporary and archival photos and film, that Kodak didn’t know how to market.)

1999: Getty Images acquires Art.com for around US $110M (Attempt to get into the art and consumer business.)

2000: The acquisition of Visual Communications Group was financed using the proceeds of a $250 million 5% convertible subordinated note offering due 2007, which closed on March 6, 2000. This left Getty Images with excess cash over and above the $220 million purchase price. The continued acceleration of their e-commerce revenue growth, increasing more than 160% in 1999 validated their business strategy.

2002: Getty Images lists on the New York Stock Exchange

2003: Getty Images acquires ImageDirect, Inc., a premiere provider of music, entertainment, and fashion photography (Celebrity event and red carpet images, popular to the consumer industry.)

2005: Getty Images acquires Photonica & Iconica (US and European operations of leading Japanese online photo stock company Amana) for US $51M

2006: Getty Images pays US $50M for iStockphoto.com (The company that pioneered microstock images for $1, making use of “crowdsourcing.”)

2006: Getty Images acquires Ireland-based Pixel Images Holdings (Stockdisc and Stockbyte, Getty’s largest image partner) for US $135M

2007: Getty Images acquires celebrity photo distributor WireImage (including Media Vast, Film Magic, and Contour Photos) for US $200M (Last major competitor for the celebrity image business.)

2007: Getty Images acquires UK ‘citizen journalism’ agency Scoopt

2007: Getty buys Pump Audio music licensing company for US $42.5M

2008: Form 10-Q shows the quarterly 2008 net income to be $23,864,000. Stockholders vote to adopt a merger agreement with affiliates of the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC. Price - $2.4 billion.

To read more of MacTribe's "Getty: Growth of a Small Empire"
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