Business in Vancouver's "How I Did It" feature asks business leaders to explain in their own words how they achieved a business goal in the face of significant entrepreneurial challenges. In this week's issue, iStockphoto founder Bruce Livingstone talks about his return to the industry with his new business venture, Stocksy United, a co-operative distributor looking to carve a niche in premium stock photography.
"Back in the year 2000, I invented this industry called microstock photography.
"It was a place where you could swap images online. The service was free to begin with. The hosting bills got too expensive, so I ended up going out and asking the community if they would support a small fee per download credit. Everybody agreed. I didn't realize at the time that that was the birth of an entire industry.
"The thing about stock photography is that everybody uses it: non-profits, insurance companies, health care, dental, students, retail shops – you name it.
"It grew to a substantial size, and I ended up selling it to Getty Images in 2006.
"Later I left Getty. I tried to retire. I moved to Los Angeles.
"Photographers kept coming to see me all the time in L.A. They all said the same thing: there was too much competition. They couldn't make a living anymore at the stock photography game.
"We saw that there was an opportunity, but we didn't want to compete with Getty.
"We wanted to make something totally new. Not only did the model have to be compelling for photographers, we wanted to share ownership, and efforts and profits, and we wanted to make a difference for art buyers.
"Because I had known all those people for so long, finding the supply of images to start Stocksy was not difficult, and finding customers was not that difficult, either.
"We moved back to Canada so that we could take advantage of the Co-operatives Act. The law is fairly well advanced compared with other places in the world.
"Everybody who is a photographer – from São Paulo to Serbia – owns a share in Stocksy. We don't know what the share's value is yet because we haven't had our financial AGM, but we'll know in March. They're entitled to not only a great royalty rate of 50%, but they're also entitled to profits at the end of the year.
"This is a member-driven organization. It's owned and operated by photographers.
"I think we have 70,000 images right now. People tend to market themselves in this industry based on the number of images. For that reason, we were sort of dubbed the slow photography movement.
"The curation and editing of the collection is so tightly done that the difference between us and our competitors is undeniable.
"After eight months, we were profitable, but we still want to see things grow faster. Don't get me wrong – we're seeing 30%, 40% month-over-month growth – that's been a lot to keep up with, but we think it's going to be exponential in the coming months."
