Exclusive interview: Brett Zucker, CEO of ImageQuix

Software solutions company ImageQuix announced the appointment of Brett Zucker as CEO. Zucker joins ImageQuix with more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry, with deep expertise in scaling businesses and delivering exceptional customer experiences.

The Dead Pixels Society had the opportunity to interview Zucker last week, in a wide-ranging discussion covering his background, what brought him to the company, his first insights into the volume photography market, and more. Before joining ImageQuix, Zucker most recently served as CEO of Alyce, a software platform for personalized marketing, B2B gifting, and enhanced customer engagement.

Zucker’s career spans more than 30 years in technology gives him a broad perspective on the changing dynamics of mature industries. As an example, Zucker talks about how the typeface industry is older than photography but, through his experience at  Monotype, he was able to see how digital transformation can impact longstanding business practices.

“Monotype has a history in the printing press,” says Zucker. “It’s older than photography. You might say, how are fonts even a business? Certainly from a technology and digital transformation, web Fonts were a big game changer. Legible type on devices with screens became game-changing. The lion’s share of Monotypes business is B to B, right? Think about companies or whoever licenses typography for usage in everything from their brand work to their digital ads, right, their website, and all that stuff. Monotype is what’s called a foundry, which is a studio that designs and creates fonts.

“So when I first heard about the industry, I had the same reaction that I did with fonts. High-volume photography? I’m not even sure what that means, but that makes me want to learn more.

“As I started to dig in, I saw this is an interesting use of technology. I started to learn more about the company and our Skylab acquisition, which uses AI to do all the image processing, and I found it fascinating. It’s an industry that’s 100 years old. There’s good applications of technology coming.”

Zucker added, that just like the volume photography industry – which has pivoted from a b-to-b business to a b-to-b-c model – Monotype has a similar journey. In addition to its commercial type business, Monotype also offers a marketplace called MyFonts.com.

Thousands of people sell their type through myfonts.com,” he explains.  “There are Monotype fonts up there, which probably are about a third of what you can is available, but two-thirds of those fonts on MyFonts are not from Monotype. That’s a direct-to-consumer site where you can go, if you want a wedding invite and want to use a font, you can buy one for $25-$40.”

While Zucker acknowledges this is very different from volume photography, he adds this experience managing a company with a sizable b-to-b presence with a direct-to-consumer flavor can be useful. This is especially applicable as more and more school photographers are marketing directly to parents.

Since joining ImageQuix two months ago, Zucker says he’s been impressed with the volume photography companies and studios that he has already met.

“I have found, with a few exceptions, these operate in the same way,” he observed. “They’re all generational businesses, typically handed down and treated like family. Most cases are family-owned or acquired because they worked in the business for the owner for 30 years, and they bought the business. Things are still done on a handshake. Things are still done by sitting and having dinner or breakfast. It’s a big enough industry that it’s worth going after but a small in in that we kind of know everybody.”

Zucker notes, despite the long heritage of the industry, how it has gone through drastic changes, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Volume photography companies now have direct access to consumers, through website ordering, etc., which means new skill sets and marketing approaches.

“This has been a generational shift,” he says. “These businesses now have to do B-to-C marketing.  Not only do they need to take the order online, but now they are asked to be an expert in B-to-C commerce to get the parents or guardians to make a purchase. It costs money. It costs time. ImageuQuix and others were moving along and then, suddenly, there’s been a huge inflection point over the last four or five years.

“If you start looking at the size of the market – which I love to do – it’s expanded the pie. The amount that has been spent has certainly outpaced inflation over the last couple of years. Average order values are going up. Why? Because we can now bundle more value for parents.”

Bullish on the future of ImageQuix

Zucker is bullish on the future of the volume photography industry and on ImageQuix. He understands there are many questions regarding the company’s future, especially in regard to private equity (PE) ownership. (ImageQuix was bought by Charlesbank Capital Partners in 2022.) Zucker has background with private-equity companies and shared some of his perspective.

“I have two data points from a PE world,” he says. Both of them were very similar: They’re not going to make money unless they build intrinsic value from where they’re starting. In regards to ImageQuix, there has never once been a hint of not investing in our customers. I would not have joined if that was the case. If anything, it’s the opposite.

“Ultimately, with private equity, they have to exit,” said Zucker. “That’s the plan to sell to someone else. At some point, every PE-owned business reaches a point where it’s an annuity, where you’ve saturated the market and the opportunity isn’t as big. The next buyer doesn’t have to invest and grow, so they have to harvest and turn it into a cash annuity. We are not even remotely close to that yet.”

Zucker sees continued opportunities for growth for the industry, with particular enthusiasm for future products derived from digital and AI technology. An example of that, for example, could be an archive product for parents, featuring a student’s entire school picture history.