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In 1993, Jonathan Klein left the investment banking business in London to start Getty Communications with friend, business partner and oil Industry heir Mark Getty. Backed by private investors, they bought Tony Stone Images in 1995, then took their company public in 1996. Since then, they've built the largest stock image company in the world, with revenues of $100 million in 1997, and projected revenues for 1998 of close to $200 million. In addition to TSI, Getty Images also owns PhotoDisc, the royalty-free segment leader; Hulton Getty, an archival collection; Uaison Agency, a news and reportage agency; Energy Film library, which has been combined with another stock footage acquisition, Fabulous Footage; and AHsport, a sports photo agency. We caught up with Klein to find out what's in store for Getty companies-and the photographers they represent-in the coming months.
PDN: What's Getty's overall strategy?
Jonathan Klein: Our mission when we started off was to accumulate the best content and businesses in each of the key categories of the visual content industry. The second part of our strategy is to apply technology in order to make our assets available to a far greater audience than had previously been imagined.
PDN: Are you still in an acquisition mode?
JK: We anticipate that in the next year to 18 months, we are likely to make fewer acquisitions than in the last three years, and that they're also likely to be smaller. The focus now is more on technologically enabling the collections for Web commerce.
PDN: Is there risk that PhotoDisc, a royalty-free company, will cannibalize the base of Tony Stone Images, a traditional stock agency?
JK: I'm wondering why this issue of cannibalization is something we need to worry about! If it's true that PhotoDisc will take some sales that TSI would have otherwise had, then common ownership and management of both business under one roof would be a benefit.
PDH: What's the benefit of ownership under one roof?
JK: it enables us to drive the segmentation of the market. It enables us to offer our customers both [royalty-free and traditional stock images]. And it gives us huge market knowledge to operate much more successfully.
PDH: Getty paid out about 38 percent of its total sales in photographer commissions...