The roots of Imagelab go back 27 years to 1997.
During the infancy of modern e-commerce, Grant Henley created globalgallery.com, a boot-strapped startup founded on the concept of being a virtual version of the poster markets that would at the time periodically pop-up on college campuses across the country. Before Google or Amazon existed, globalgallery.com was one of the first specialized online retail sites selling art posters and prints direct to consumers. As the original dotcom boom emerged, globalgallery.com was quickly outflanked by well-funded startups. So the company began to pivot and evolve, and that evolution is still ongoing today.
Founded and based in Austin, TX, Imagelab now offers a suite of services allowing the company to operate in several different marketplaces and provide services to clients and customers of many types. At its core the company's foundation is based in technology.
Imagelab has developed proprietary and purpose-built systems providing a backbone for streamlined and automated print production, frame production, and fulfillment. Imagelab also develops and maintains a stack of cloud apps providing retail and wholesale sales channels for its own brands as well as those of its clients. These assets allow the company to be flexible, nimble, and provide a natural scalability so that it can pivot and respond to changes in the marketplace as well as the changing needs of its clients.
Staying true to its roots, the company still operates a direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand. It also continues to maintain a robust wholesale-to-the-trade publishing business, which also includes offering finished goods through third-party home and lifestyle marketplaces and e-commerce channels. However, providing services to clients is the key focus that makes the company what it is today.
The Imagelab services model is based on working with clients who have their own archive of images or content. The company then provides them with an array of services that best suits their particular needs and sales channels.
Imagelab has partnered with many of the leading art museums in the United States to establish successful print programs that not only provide earned income for these institutions but also a valuable resource for engagement with their visitors. Imagelab can tailor a solution that enables its clients to develop and maintain a multi-channel approach to the marketing and sale of premium archival-quality reproductions of images from collections of all types and of all sizes.