Shutterstock Announces Investment in ZCool

This financial commitment builds on the successful operational relationship and strategic alignment with China's leading creative social network

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Shutterstock, Inc.

Feb 22, 2018, 07:10 ET

NEW YORK, Feb. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Shutterstock, Inc. (NYSE: SSTK), a leading global technology company offering a creative platform for high-quality assets, tools and services, today announced its investment in China's leading creative social network and artist platform with nearly six million registered users, ZCool Network Technology Limited. ZCool has been the exclusive distributor of Shutterstock's creative content in China since 2014.

Shutterstock's $15 million investment further expands Shutterstock's presence in fast growing markets. In connection with its investment, Shutterstock has also appointed a director to ZCool's Board of Directors.

"China is a strong market for creative content use in print and digital across all industries, and I am delighted to strengthen our relationship with ZCool," said Jon Oringer, Founder and CEO of Shutterstock. "We recognise ZCool's achievement in building a strong creative community and their long term plan to cultivate a complete creative ecosystem. This investment forges a deeper partnership for us in China and provides the thriving and dedicated creative communities and global businesses across China access to Shutterstock tools and assets."

This major strategic commitment builds on the successful operational relationship Shutterstock and ZCool have had since 2014 when ZCool first became the exclusive distributor of Shutterstock creative content in China. This multi-year strategic partnership was extended in 2016, and includes creative images, and video collections for commercial use as well as providing Shutterstock enterprise plans to Chinese customers. The content is distributed through ZCool's e-commerce page, HelloRF.com and Shutterstock's Enterprise content is accessed through their Plus.HelloRF.com site. In addition, through utilization of ZCool's API, Shutterstock's content now powers large technology platforms in China such as Tencent Social Ads and WPS Office.

About Shutterstock, Inc.

Shutterstock, Inc. (NYSE: SSTK), directly and through its group subsidiaries, is a leading global provider of high-quality licensed photographs, vectors, illustrations, videos and music to businesses, marketing agencies and media organizations around the world. Working with its growing community of over 350,000 contributors, Shutterstock adds hundreds of thousands of images each week, and currently has more than 175 million images and more than 9 million video clips available.

Headquartered in New York City, Shutterstock has offices around the world and customers in more than 150 countries. The company also owns Bigstock, a value-oriented stock media agency; Shutterstock Custom, a custom content creation platform; Offset, a high-end image collection; PremiumBeat a curated royalty-free music library; Rex Features, a premier source of editorial images for the world's media; and Webdam, a cloud-based digital asset management service for businesses.

For more information, please visit www.shutterstock.com and follow Shutterstock on Twitter and on Facebook.

SOURCE Shutterstock, Inc.