Lights Out at Photocase

‍A Look Back‍
Photocase was founded in 2001. The community quickly became hugely popular, especially among students. In 2005, credits were introduced and Photocase became a commercial platform. Microstock was new and rolled up the market with favourable prices. Business was good. But from 2015, the first clouds appeared. This occurred because the market became increasingly polarised, which was particularly noticeable among the smaller agencies. In 2019, we managed to restructure the company as a team and with your help by taking drastic measures.

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Why, why, why?
Sales stagnated for five years, which must be seen as a success given the simultaneous development of the industry. Corona came, then a war in the neighbourhood - but what hit us as a company the hardest was the emergence of easily available free images, flanked by an economy that simply didn't want to grow. For a little while, copyright infringement tracking kept us afloat, but generic sales kept going down. At the same time, costs rose without us being able to pass them on in the form of price increases. Now the first half of the year has gone so badly that we will probably not achieve our annual targets. We are at a point where we have to pull the emergency brake. Unfortunately, there is no utopia for Photocase, no plan B. In fact, things could only get worse, because the deluge of AI images has only just begun. For me, it feels like a defeat.

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What now?
Instead of simply stealing away, we have chosen a different, Photocase-typical way - the openly communicated, respectful separation. We know many of you personally and don't want to leave anyone out in the cold. Although this decision means a further investment for us, we believe in fairness and transparency, and so these values should accompany us to the bitter end. That's why we are dropping the payout limit with immediate effect, so that smaller amounts of less than 100 euros can now also be withdrawn. It would be nice if you could leave your pictures with us until the end. They will then be deleted automatically.‍

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Kai, Xavier and I are very upset that the shutdown is really happening now. We love Photocase and the company has been an important part of our lives for a long time, to which we have contributed a lot of energy, emotion and commitment. Just like you have done from the other side: we thank you for the wonderful collaboration.

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If you have any questions or need to discuss anything, please contact Xavier ([email protected]).

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Goodbye, arrivederci and au revoir

Your Dittmar (and Kai and Xavier)

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PS: If you've just realised that you're missing one or two files that you've published on Photocase - there's a new button in the photo admin that you can use to download your complete portfolio.