A week after announcing that it had
acquired 86.6 percent of Framepool, Broadside Enterprises, Inc. (also known as Emaji) has announced that Frampool AG has entered into an agreement with
ImagineChina, one of the largest photo and video agencies in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Readers will note that at the beginning of 2016 ImagineChina represented the work of Corbis and many other distributors around the world before
Visual China Group (VCG) acquired Corbis. Some believed that losing Corbis might be a major blow to ImageineChina’s business and certainly VCG hoped that would be the case. But in July Bytedance, a digital tech company,
acquired ImagineChina and provided the photography company with access to new funds. ImagineChina has always had a stronger presence on the editorial side of the business while VCG is stronger on the commercial side.
The Broadside Enterprises press release noted that the Chinese theatrical box office alone is expected to grow to over $10 billion in revenues by 2017 and surpass the United States to become the largest market of its kind in the world. Likewise, over 400 million online video users in China with increasing access to high-speed Internet are creating an enormous demand for mobile and web content.
Framepool collects, selects and prepares high quality video footage from TV, movie or commercial film producers and sells licenses to its growing library of over one million clips to its 3,500 active customers, among them the most prominent advertising agencies, broadcasters, film studios and production companies. It also provides rights clearance and indemnification services, has commenced providing production services for footage intensive documentaries and is moving into the licensing of stock photography.
It is unclear how relevant Chinese theatrical box office growth is to the kind or content Framepool has to offer. It is believed that most of the Framepool clips will be of interest to editorial and advertising customers, and possibly those producing short, low budget marketing of information films, not major box office releases.
As part of the new agreement with ImagineChina, Framepool has launched a
Chinese language version of its website.
Framepool's market expansion into China is being supported by the program "Export Bavaria 3.0 Go International" of the German state of Bavaria, where Framepool is headquartered. Additional information about Broadside Enterprises can be found in the Company's reports and filings at
www.OTCMarkets.com, on the
Broadside Enterprises website (note that it links to
http://www.emaji.com/) and at Twitter at @brse_news.