Industry Licensing photography Headquarters New York City Type of business Privately held company | Website www.trunkarchive.com Founded 2004 | |
Key people Matthew Moneypenny, (President, CEO),
Leslie Simitch,
(Exec. Vice President),
Melissa Kelly (COO),
Rich Companik, (CFO) Profiles | ||
Trunk Archive is an image licensing agency, based in New York City. The company was started in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2004 by a group of investors, including serial entrepreneur Mickey Beyer-Clausen who also served as the company's CEO until 2007. In 2013, the company was acquired by Waddell & Reed and Ivy Asset Strategy Funds.
Trunk acquired Snapper Media, an Australian-based celebrity and creative image licensing agency, in September 2013. In February 2014, Trunk announced that it had acquired Bernstein & Andriulli (B&A) and sister company, Gallery Stock, both of which retained their brand identities and continued operations under Howard Bernstein's direction.
CEO Matthew Moneypenny has said that the goal of Trunk Archive is to 'make the world a prettier place', with the Archive's catalogue featuring imagery from artists and designers such as Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, Arthur Elgort, and Patrick Demarchelier.
The company has received criticism for its use of automated image tracking software PicScout to identify copyright infringement of images in its catalogue. In 2015, they claimed infringement against the magazine 2600: The Hacker Quarterly for their use of a transparent ink splatter image on the cover of their Spring 2012 issue. Trunk Archive identified its own image that featured the ink spatter as the source, it was subsequently revealed by 2600 that the original ink spatter was created by a Finnish artist on DeviantArt who had released it into the public domain, where it was subsequently used by the 2600 cover, as well as the image in Trunk Archive's library. The infringement case was subsequently dropped by the company, and COO Melissa Kelly sent a letter to the magazine apologizing for the mistake.