George Sinclair launches distribution business called Universal Images Group

George Sinclair, Founder the stock photography consultancy Virtual Picture Desk, has launched a new business called Universal Images Group Limited focused on becoming a distribution portal for Virtual Picture Desk clients looking to syndicate their work through additional 3rd party channels. The new business will be based in the UK lead by Graham Everitt who was recently appointed to the post of Business Development Director. Everitt is a stock licensing industry veteran who formerly managed the Antony Blake Stock Food Agency.
As a first step the business has entered into an agreement with Alamy, to provide it with upwards of 300,000 images for global distribution. “We are delighted to be working with Universal Images since it provides our clients with specialized collections and unique subject matter,” said Alan Capel, Head of Content at Alamy. “It significantly increases the level of our content which has been pre-edited and selected for our global market. It also has the advantage of providing us with a single point of contact for content from many collections.”

Universal Images will edit the rights managed content to eliminate images which are below a size threshold of 20MB , those with poor key wording & metadata and which do not meet reasonable submission guideline standards developed by VPD.

“Many of the collections and photographer groups represent great content which is ideal for the editorial and other vertical markets, and in particular those markets which do not require 50 meg digital file sizes and/or model releases, which of course are required by Getty Images and Corbis for their creative markets,” said George Sinclair “and Universal Images Group provides distribution partners for the remaining 90% of their available content. Many of the VPD clients have seen significant growth from Getty Images and Corbis and this, together with increases from their domestic markets, has added 30% to their sales revenues for each of the last two years. We established the Universal Images Group to further service the needs of the client to maximize further sales revenues for their photographers by distributing aggregated content by subject matter and themes.”

Web:  www.universalimagesgroup.com - www.vpdcorp.com

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