Crestock is gone…

On April 9 this year, one of the long-standing players in the microstock market, Crestock, informed all contributors of its bankruptcy. The microstock agency Crestock (Crestock Corporation), which started operations back in 2005, sent out a notice about the beginning of bankruptcy proceedings and the acceptance of creditors’ claims.

Crestock bankruptcy

In fact, if you look at the financial statement they distributed along with this notice, you’ll see that as of the reporting date, their debts amount to about $187,000, while their assets total only $15,000.

So, those who never received their last payments or whose earnings were below the minimum payout threshold can try to file a claim, but it’s unlikely you’ll recover anything from them.

Yes, in the official bankruptcy notice they express deep regret and honestly admit that they have virtually no assets left and almost no chance of making any payments after liquidation.

Nevertheless, an English-language form for submitting creditor claims was attached to the letter.

These are several screenshots showing the figures from the bankruptcy form. As we can see, all of Crestock’s debt consists of payments owed to contributors (royalties).

Their assets are represented by intangible property (Intellectual property). Overall, it can be assumed that, at best, after the bankruptcy process is completed, no more than 9% of creditors will receive any payments.

And if we take into account the additional expenses incurred during the procedure, the percentage of satisfied creditor claims covered by those assets will be even lower.

What to do with your Crestock portfolio?

This situation is quite interesting. The letter states that the Canadian company Design Pics Inc. made an offer to the Crestock trustee to acquire the company so that the stock agency could continue operations as one of the buyer’s divisions.

According to the offer, all outstanding debts to creditors (contributors) will be written off, and the buyer will start fresh – meaning payments will begin only from future sales made after the acquisition.

So if you have a portfolio on Crestock, there’s a chance that, if the deal goes through, sales on the platform may resume and payments will continue. However, that does not include the old debts owed by Crestock.

Who is Design Pics Inc.?

The company was founded in 2001 and over the years has acquired or absorbed quite a number of smaller stock photography agencies. Under the Design Pics Inc. umbrella currently operate stock sites such as Design Pics, Printscapes, The Irish Image Collection, First Light, Axiom Photographic, Pacific Stock, Alaska Stock, AgStock Images, Disability Images.

As you can see, the buyer has the necessary expertise in this field, is capable of restoring stock operations, and providing support. However, all brands under this company focus exclusively on distributing stock photography, and as of now they do not work with other microstock content types.

So it might make sense to wait and see whether Crestock gets a new owner and under what terms.

This article is available in the following categories: About Microstocks