Babies form and important part of most portrait photographers sales. Do a good job and you have a customer for years to come. Future sittings may include siblings, family portraits, weddings, anniversaries etc. The leading company in the baby field is Bounty which was featured in this weekends Sunday Times list of fastest growing equity backed companies in the UK.
With profits of £13.5 million the turnover increased by 66% with the fourth highest margin in the league table. 100's of portrait photographers are supplied with information and details of young Mums by Bounty, who collect the data from the young Mum in the hospital just after the baby is born. Bounty was bought by Barclays Capital and the management in 2009 for £54 million and with profits improving from £4 million in 2009 is now worth a great deal more.
The result is not so good for photographers with Bounty now selling the data to one company as pregnancy data, another new born 0 to 12 weeks, another 12 weeks to 24 weeks, another 24 weeks to 48 weeks, and another after 1 year! It is all the same data! Before the buy out, for the previous 20 years, the data was sold exclusively to the trade body The Master Photographers Association for the use of their members on the Cherub scheme. Bounty have probably very much increased their income from photographers in the midst of a recession. This is a situation that is unlikely to continue.
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