In the past year, 500px has been aggressive about its global expansion; the company raised a $13 million Series B before finally expanding to the Chinese market, and hired a former COO of Getty iStock and senior vice president of Getty to expand its licensing business.
In its latest development, 500px announced that it is expanding into Europe with the launch of a marketplace in Germany. Dittmar Frohmann, who has held senior positions like vice president of sales and marketing at 123RF.com and as managing director of iStock by Getty Images, will oversee 500px’s German operations.
At the same time, the company is bringing on Kimberly Potvin, who was originally with Flickr in San Francisco, as 500px’s director of content. At Flickr, Potvin acted as director of curation and content and built the licensing corpus, worked with the community on features and special projects, and led the monetization activities for the platform.
“Kimberly’s hire and the launch of 500px’s Marketplace in Germany is part of a continued commitment by 500px to invest in and build out our Marketplace to better service our customers and community” said Andy Yang, CEO of 500px.
Through marktplatz.500px.com, creatives and marketers in Germany can now easily license 500px’s global content, or work with 500px and its photographers directly, to create and source original images.
“Millions of photographers in Europe are already part of the 500px community, but the licensing business for 500px in Europe has remained largely untapped,” said Yang. “With this expansion, 500px is giving our 7 million photographers access to a new market and customers to license their work.”
