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GOODSHOOT: THE FRENCH TOUCH
October 3, 2003
Goodshoot is a French company that started producing Royalty Free imagery in 1994.
According to General Manager, Philippe Bigard, the first few years were difficult
because there was relatively little use of RF in France and Europe during that period.
Most of the discs they have produced in the past three years have been created by a
production team with the photographer receiving a guarantee that will cover expenses.
Photographers interested in working with Goodshoot can contact them through the web
site at www.goodshoot.com .
In the last four years revenues and profits have been OK with Goodshoot generating
about 1.5 million euros in 2002 and on track for sales of 2 million euros in 2003.
About two years ago they started representing other brands in addition to their own.
The first was ImageSource. In early 2003 they added PhotoAlto and Pixland, and just
recently they started representing Brand X. Their focus is on European style imagery
as Philippe Bigard believes the European market requires a special touch.
When they started operation they were putting 100 images on a disc, but at the same
time they also produced some background CD's with only 25 images. Later they were the
first to launch CD's with only 50 images and most of their discs today have only 50
images. They now have 170 Goodshoot titles with a total of about 10,000 images.
Counting the titles of the other brands, they offer their customers a total of 835
titles with about 70,000 total images.
This means that about 20% of their titles are Goodshoot created discs, but 75% of their
revenue comes from the licensing of their own titles. The other 665 titles generate
about 25% of their revenue, or 500,000 euros for 2003. About 55% of their gross
revenue comes from direct sales Goodshoot makes through their own marketing in France.
The remaining revenue comes from about 100 distributors around the world who represent
the Goodshoot created images.
The critical issue for most photographers producing RF is to get a volume of images
accepted for marketing. Given the numbers above the average image is earning about 200
euros a year in gross revenue. If the photographer gets 20% of that it works out to
about 40 euros per image per year.
At the moment about 55% of their revenue comes from the sale of CD's and 45% comes from
single image sales, but the single image share is growing month by month. Most of the
single image sales are for the 12MB to 16MB file size that is sufficient for A5 format
at 300 DPI (A5 is equivalent to 1/2 page in U.S. sizes.) It is interesting that single
image sales represent only 45% of Goodshoot's revenues, but 80% or Getty's revenues.
This may be an indication of how far Europe (Goodshoot's major market) is behind in
moving toward the purchase of single images rather than CD's. Certainly, in the very
near future the European use of single images is likely to approach the Getty level.
At the current time Goodshoot does not have any images on their site that are not also
available on a CD, but they expect to offer such images in the near future.
Given its emphasis on the European look Goodshoot is primarily interested in working
with European photographers. In the past three years most of the their discs have been
created by a production team with the photographer receiving a guarantee that covers
expenses. Photographers interested in working with Goodshoot can contact them through
the web site at www.goodshoot.com . Goodshoot
is also interested in finding distributors
in the U.S. who are interested in marketing their European produced imagery.