PhotoShelter Acquires UK-Based Third Light To Accelerate Growth And Global Leadership In Digital Asset Management

– Expands DAM capabilities for enterprises, organizations, and visual creatives

– Scales platform and team to accelerate product innovation and growth

– Meets global demand for faster, easier, smarter cloud-based collaboration tools

PhotoShelter, a leading provider of digital asset management (DAM) software trusted by thousands of global organizations and enterprises, announced that it has acquired Third Light, a UK-based DAM software provider. The acquisition was made in partnership with PhotoShelter’s investor Clearhaven Partners (“Clearhaven”), a software and technology focused private equity firm based in Boston, and less than four months after Clearhaven’s recent growth investment in PhotoShelter. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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PhotoShelter powers over 1,300 enterprises, brands, sports leagues, universities, and other diversified organizations in seamless visual media collaboration. From capturing and storing images in real-time, to content delivery and licensing, PhotoShelter’s purpose-built platform powers end-to-end efficiency and speed for even the most demanding workflows and storage requirements. In addition to powering name-brand organizations, PhotoShelter provides over 80,000 professional photographers with solutions for photo storage, portfolio websites, image delivery and monetization, and more.

By acquiring Third Light, PhotoShelter adds a talented UK-based team, picks up their flagship DAM application, Chorus – featuring robust collaboration and work-in-progress tools for creatives, and adds more than 300 global customers. The merger expands PhotoShelter’s DAM capabilities and international market share as the company meets growing global demand for streamlining media cloud storage and creative workflows.

“At PhotoShelter, we approach digital asset management as more than a place for storing assets, but as a facilitator for fostering active collaboration and workflow simplicity – an approach that has been defined by our customers’ needs,” said Andrew Fingerman, CEO at PhotoShelter. “We know creative teams carry an unwavering commitment to their craft and are at the very heart of how organizations and brands bring visual storytelling to life. PhotoShelter’s DAM solutions enable those organizations to securely and efficiently organize and access highly valuable assets in order to build on the value of those assets. Our investment in Third Light underscores PhotoShelter’s commitment to continued innovation and expansion of our capabilities and geographic footprint in order to best serve our current and future customers.”

PhotoShelter has been a pioneer in DAM for more than 15 years, from launching the first cloud archive for photographers to becoming the preeminent platform for organizing, accessing and sharing digital assets across creative teams and enterprise ecosystems. It has also created new tools for connecting creative communities with brands across digital platforms and events.  Advanced platform capabilities and enterprise security have attracted marquee customers, including Major League Baseball (MLB), NASCAR, Special Olympics, Delta Airlines, Sports Illustrated, NCAA Photos, FreshDirect, and The PGA TOUR, among hundreds more.

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Third Light’s products are recognized for enabling streamlined content exchange across creative teams, powerful search tools, unique features such as desktop sync and a variety of marketing-tech integrations that make them the central source of truth for visual assets. Third Light’s proprietary product suite and customer service adds valuable capabilities to PhotoShelter’s platform and has earned Third Light customer relationships with respected organizations such as Sony, Virgin, Cambridge University, Southampton FC, Infosys, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and hundreds more.

“We’re incredibly proud of the technology and trust we’ve built at Third Light with many of the world’s most discerning organizations,” said Michael Wells, Third Light’s Founder and Managing Director, who has joined the leadership team at PhotoShelter. “PhotoShelter’s extensive history of providing software that fosters seamless workflows with an emphasis on ease-of-use is evident in the blue-chip customer base it serves – we’re delighted that Third Light will now be part of the PhotoShelter platform and continue to support the growing global creative community.”

“Clearhaven Partners’ investment philosophy is rooted in identifying exceptional software companies and management teams with whom we partner to build significant intrinsic business value by serving as a partner to our portfolio companies. Both PhotoShelter and Third Light have customer-first approaches to innovation and service that exemplify the characteristics we look for in our investments,” said Michelle Noon, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Clearhaven.

“We are thrilled to continue to invest in the expansion of PhotoShelter’s global footprint through the acquisition of Third Light,” said Christopher Ryan, Managing Partner at Clearhaven. “This acquisition further supports PhotoShelter’s ability to meet significant global demand for DAM solutions and to optimize the user experience for new and existing customers.”

The acquisition comes amid growing demand among creatives and organizations who seek faster speed and greater efficiency for organizing and managing digital assets. Management estimates the global total addressable market (TAM) for Digital Asset Management software is approximately $5 billion today and growing 20-30% annually, with equal opportunity across both the U.S. and European continents. PhotoShelter has grown its Brands solution at a sustained 45% CAGR.

Today, PhotoShelter safeguards more than 4 billion visual media assets on its platform and more than 18 petabytes of data, representing one of the largest collections of visual content in the world. In 2021, PhotoShelter and Third Light added more than 300 new organizations to the platform, including support for all 30 Major League Baseball teams.

As a part of the combined company’s accelerated growth trajectory and investments in a customer-first organization, PhotoShelter is actively hiring across multiple roles to support its growing sales and customer service departments. With the acquisition of Third Light, it has added a European-based office in Cambridge, United Kingdom, while maintaining its existing locations in New York, New York (U.S. headquarters) and Guadalajara, Mexico.

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