Interview with David Norris, CEO of OnRequestImages

I am doing great, how are you?

OnRequestImages.com provides custom stock photography, which is a new type of service that is being offered. We create imagery for Advertising Agencies, and we do it on demand, with a network of over 1,600 photographers around the world. If you can come up with an image that you need, we can create it in 48 to 72 hours.

I have been a photographer and a computer science grad for a long time now, and the emergence of two key technologies has made OnRequestImages.com possible. One being digital photography, and the other being high speed broadband access. It is now possible to create imagery, and to move it around the world very rapidly. I came up with this idea, a year and a half ago or so. The idea was to provide a solution, so that clients no longer had to compromise their creative campaigns. Instead, our model allows for photographers from around the world to create the right images for them and deliver them online in real time.

We have developed proprietary technology that allows us to take a description from a client, and narrow it down to the key aspects of what they want; style, location, equipment, and characteristics of the subject matter. From that our system targets those photographers that would be most appropriate in photographing that type of image.

A photographer that shoots people, would not get a request for a picture of a car, and so on. The photographers can the view the requests as they come through. If they want to shoot them, then they can. We do a 50:50 split of the revenue earned. Photographers recieve a nice royalty stream as the license images.

That is one of the unique aspects of our model. Clients make their request, and we typically have 3 to 5 photographers shoot the same assignment. When the client receives the imagery, they see a variety of different interpretations of that image. They then select the image they want to license.

The photographers receive 50% of the revenue, each time the image is licensed. For example, if an image is created and a client licenses it immediately, then the photographer receives a royalty fee. Three months later, if the image is licensed again, they receive the fee again.

We are building a sizeable stock photography library, and all the imagery created for these assignments becomes stock for us, and we then look into that stock for clients.

We acquired a company that had a core technology, and a network of photographers. To kick off the business, and accelerate our time to market we did that acquisition. From there we have grown the photographer base organically. We have taken a very methodical approach to growing out network, but doing a number of focus groups within the industry, and three formal pilots with clients as well. With each pilot, we improved and grew the service to ensure that by the time of the formal launch it was very well tested.

We target three primary types of customers; advertising agencies, corporate marketing departments, and graphic design firms. Our process for taking our service to market, was really building up a database of contacts within those specific industries. We have now established a fairly large customer base, and sizable lead source. We have over 25,000 leads that we are pursuing. As a small business, generating that size of opportunity has been really advantageous. Our sales force is quite busy following up on those leads.

It is a good problem to have. We are growing pretty rapidly. Some of the secrets to our success, are things I have done at other companies. Things such as having an extremely low overhead, trying to get the company to a profitable cash flow state as early as possible, while bringing in as little capital as you can. This allows you to avoid being overally diluted in the early stages. Once you become profitable you are also much more attractive to the investment community. That is the formula we have used in this particular business. We run a very tight ship, and have brought in a minimum of outside capital.

Our offering is very simplistic. In the past clients had two choice. They could either hirer a photographer or they could buy a stock image. If they hire a photographer the costs and logistics and time involved with setting up a shoot are significant. If you use the challenge is finding an image that is exactly what you want and is not being used by your competitors. There are a fair amount of compromises that our clients were having to live with. With our service they get the best of both worlds. We provide custom photography with no upfront committments or fees.

We take products all the time and distribute out to our network of photographers. T-Mobile had shoots going on all over the US, which we sent out and facilitated the distribution. It also allowed for T-Mobile to be more local in their shots at a very reasonable price.

I have a philosophy that you should build business in times that are necessarily in the best economic conditions. We founded the company using the same philosophies I used with founding my other companies. That is to build them from the ground up, shoot for profitability, and run them really tight. In an economy that is somewhat challenged the opportunity for smaller companies is greater as you can save money by hiring great people at good rates, equipment and office space at lower costs. The availability of resorces is very high.

You must be willing to dream the dream and that execution is everything. In the end, the performance of the company is completely dependent upon your ability to execute.