News From The Edge
A State of the Industry Commentary by Judson Rosebush, of www.goedge.com
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year and the best from all of us at Edge. Needless to say the
year just ended has been difficult for many. Before the attacks we had
begun to see an up-tick in business, and subsequent to them business has
continued to firm up. The dot-com fiasco wiped out a lot of hyped
business--from Wall Street operations worth billions to domain-name
speculation. These losses percolate into our retail base and have made the
customers more discriminating. Unlike the dot.coms, our industry
depends more on cash-flow than investment; our industry has wavered
but remains on firm footing. Throughout the past year we have witnessed
acquisitions, a buying and selling of healthy sites not unlike the radio
market, pressure on the entry operator, subsistence of the niches. We're
here to stay.
All of us at Edge lived through the attack and were close enough to see it,
sometimes hear it, and most certainly in the days following, smell it. We
have ash and dust on our bodies and the dead in our lungs. The attack has
been a powerful motivating factor. It's in our faces: Life is transient. We need to keep up our guard, while focusing on building toward
goals.
At Edge, our goal is to be a photo agency that specializes in erotica of all
types. We try our best not to discriminate and make value judgments. Our
goal is to connect the photographer/model with the webmaster/editor. We
have the mix to pick from. Edge is quite good at some aspects of this mission.
Edge has been successful in forging relationships with about 100
photographers (and a few models). These photographers shoot with many
different eyes and minds. Some have a focused vision, and see only beige
hose or black heels. For others it is about the flirt with the model; for
others it is the scene, or the artistic composition, and for some it is a
craft--media to be thought about, planned, and constructed. We embrace all
of them, and love their work and their individuality.
Edge has also been successful at forging relationships with webmasters,
although I think we have a lot of room for growth here. Our largest sales
are for largely sight-unseen material that meets a particular spec: counts
and categories. We are good at this because we have a searchable 40-field
database on every picture set, and because we now have a very large library
of indexed material--slightly over 5000 sets totaling 250,000 pictures.
Another 100,000 slides and digital files are in house but not fully
indexed; these get brought to market both on a demand basis, as well as
on a new release schedule. During the past year a new release could be as
small as a dozen pictures, and I think our largest was over 12,000 pictures.
Edge's focus has been, and will continue to be, building a diverse collection,
and providing personal customer service. We do want to showcase our product
better and our goal is to display all our thumbnails and search terms on
our Web site. This is a tall order, and here are our plans, since they will
affect how we work together more in this new year:
1) We are going to deploy as many thumbnails as possible. Our next
Announcement will point you to some new sections that include thumbnails
and searchable keywords. We will be putting some special offers there, in
particular some set pricing, which is a modus we have avoided in the past.
Please understand this is an experiment and that we will continue to sell
on a price-per-picture basis on all large orders, and that we will continue
to provide volume discounts.
2) The new pages will present an upgraded navigation bar that will make it
easy to traverse the site. The pages will be organized in a three level
hierarchy, so that navigation is always obvious. Each page will include a
search capability, e-mail, and a shopping cart. For those of you who pay
with credit cards on file, wire, or check, we will make sure you don't have
to jump through hoops here.
3) We are going to button the site down even tighter. The site has security
on it now, but we continue to experience transgressions, especially by large
search engines and ISPs. We do not think it serves either our photographers
or our customers' interests for the lay public to access sample
images--after all, our business is to license images so our customers can
consolidate and moderate the lay public's access. Ergo we have implemented
our own password system and will be moving that from prototype to practice
early this year. The goedge.com site is really for players, not tourists.
So if you're a player please be our guest. Gary or Jake or I can help get
you set up, or you can "do the form." Most importantly, we want you to find
it a useful tool for your work!
So please tell us what you think, what's right and what's not, and how we
can help connect pictures and people together.
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