Axiom Photographic Agency Limited ceased trading on September 20, 2012, and was subsequently placed into Voluntary Liquidation at a meeting of the shareholders on October 23, 2012 due to its inability to meet its obligations to creditors.
The Liquidator subsequently accepted an offer presented by
Design Pics Inc., to purchase the assets of Axiom Photographic, which became effective October 25, 2012. The business of Axiom Photographic will continue under the management of Tim Hook in Axiom’s London office as a division of Design Pics Inc. All web related activity will carry on using the existing URL of
www.axiomphotographic.com
Design Pics has offered new contracts to Axiom Contributors which include a voluntary offer by Design Pics for the contributors to recover any unpaid amounts owed by the original Axiom Photographic Agency Limited.
Axiom owes contributors in excess of £100,000.00 (roughly $160,000) in royalties on past sales which it is unable to pay. On future sales contributors will receive a slightly higher commission percentage than their existing contracts specify until that time when they have recovered all the monies owed. At that point their royalty percentage will revert to what it was under the original Axiom agreement.
Design Pics is not willing to specify what the new percentages are (and it is certainly possible that they will vary from contributor to contributor), but here is an example of how the system will work. Assume that a contributor’s royalty share with Axiom was 50% of sales and the contributor is owed $1,000. Under the new agreement the contributor will receive a 70% royalty on new sales. The additional 20% will go to paying off the $1,000 debt. Thus, in this case the gross new sales of the contributor’s work would have to total $5,000 before the total debt would be paid in full. At that point the contributor’s royalty share would revert to 50% for all future sales.
Under this plan the contributor runs the risk that new sales will never total enough to make a full recovery. In the above example $1,000 was owed on a gross license fee of $2,000. Now, the contributor’s images will have to be licensed for two-and-a-half times that much in order to recover the total owed. On the other hand, with the company in liquidation and no assets, contributors stand to get nothing.
In addition, now Axiom will have a much broader selection of images to offer its customers (the entire Design Pics library) and the odds that an Axiom contributor’s image will be chosen by an Axiom customer will be reduced. On the positive side, images of Axiom contributors will now be available through Design Pics extensive distribution network and sales may be made to customers who would never have had an opportunity to see the Axiom contributor’s images before. This might facilitate a quicker recovery.
Design Pics offers its photographers a unique online facility where they can login to its management website and view their monthly sales and payment activities at any time.
One of Design Pics first acquisitions was the Irish Image Collection which occurred in 2007. Since then direct sales of this collection in the UK were largely handled by Axiom under the direction of Tim Hook. Rick Carlson, President of Design Pics, says, “the Irish Image Collection remains one of our leading selling brands, both for direct and distribution sales.”
During the prior twelve months, Design Pics has acquired First Light, a Canadian photo agency, Pacific Stock, an agency based in Hawaii, and most recently, Alaska Stock, a photo agency headquartered in Alaska. In each instance, the Staff was retained and the sales people in each office are now able to offer their respective clients the Axiom imagery as well as all Design Pics’ RM and RF brands. "We look forward to working closely with Axiom photographers and clients to maintain and develop the Axiom brand as a continuing source of premium creative travel photography." says Rick Carlson, President of Design Pics.
DesignPics Inc. is a leading provider and distributor of rights managed and royalty free creative imagery. Design Pics’ brands include: Alaska Stock, First Light, Pacific Stock, The Irish Image Collection, Axiom Photographic and Design Pics’ house RM and RF collections.