Shutterstock: Placing Imagery in a New Marketplace

Shutterstock is a photo stock agency established in 2003 by Jon Oringer. From its headquarters in New York City, Shutterstock serves the international marketplace with its operations in over 150 countries and 20 different languages. To date: Shutterstock has a library of more than 30 million royalty-free stock images, illustrations and vector graphic, on top of more than one million videos for license. When Oringer founded Shutterstock, he had a simple mission in mind: to connect creative people all around the globe through photos, videos, illustrations and vectors from thousands of contributors from anywhere in the world.

After establishing Shutterstock, Oringer himself has uploaded about 30,000 of his personal stock photos. He made these photos available through subscription, which ultimately laid the foundation for Shutterstock. From its small beginnings as a subscription site, Shutterstock slowly expanded and evolved from subscriptions and moved into la carte pricing in August 2008.

To further its expansion efforts, Shutterstock acquired its nearest rival at that time, the credit-based microstock photo agency Bigstock in September 2009. Then  in February 2011, Shutterstock and AIGA forged a partnership that would inspire its members’ creativity. The partnership was to last for two years. One year into the partnership, Shutterstock’s stock photo downloads exceeded the 200 million mark, making Shutterstock the first stock photo company to reach such milestone.

Shutterstock filed its IPO in May 2012 at the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO was completed in October. Its ticker was SSTK. Following its IPO, Shutterstock opened international offices in Berlin and London. Today, Shutterstock is available in 20 languages, including Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Uploading photos on Shutterstock would require the photographer to apply for eligibility. Initially, photographers are asked to submit at least 10 images for screening of quality and suitability. At least seven approved images are required before a contributor becomes active. Once eligible, the contributors upload their work to the Shutterstock website, supplying important information such as keywords and category. Photos are examined for quality and copyright. The flat rate of downloaded images is 25 cents.