Today GenArts made good on recent talk of expansion and announced the acquisition of SpeedSix. We speak to Steve Bannerman, Chief Marketing Officer of GenArts about the new expansion. He talks exclusively with fxguide and discusses the possible move to market custom plugins.
GenArts is riding high on having had one of the best years ever especially with record sales on Autodesk products. Today GenArts announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SpeedSix Software Limited. Effective immediately, all SpeedSix employees will join the GenArts team and remain in the UK.
This was part of the planned expansion we reported when we interviewed GenArts CEO Katherine Hays before Christmas ’08. At that time we reported that Hayes thought that “there is real room for ‘consolidation and growth’ in the industry” and she explained to fxguide that “there is an opportunity to continue investing in the company, there is a real opportunity to acquire some great assets, possibly at a better price than we might have gotten them for in a different economy… and position GenArts as the clear leader not only in this space but in a bigger space, longer term.”
The SpeedSix acquisition is part of GenArts’ aggressive growth strategy fueled by last year’s investment from Insight Venture Partners of New York.
We spoke to Steve Bannerman, Chief Marketing Officer of GenArts about the new expansion. Bannerman has 20 years experience working with tech companies, 12 with Apple. He explained that the plan was to retire the SpeedSix brand but to maintain the products but re-branded now as ‘GenArts Monsters’ and ‘GenArts Raptors’.
Monsters and Raptors plug-ins feature powerful tools including retiming, particle effects, lens distortion matching, fire, and organic fluid backgrounds. Monsters and Raptors have been used throughout the film and video industry to create effects for some of the most popular movies, television and advertising produced in the industry.
Bannerman admits that in our industry it is hard to separate the technology from the people, in terms of “what creates value for the customers,… we believe the people add as much value to the customers as the technology”, and so Bannerman was proud to point out that the key that the staff of SpeedSix will stay with the new GenArts, while remaining based in the UK.
Steve Hayes, Director of SpeedSix commented, “We’ve always admired GenArts and the outstanding reputation they have built over the last decade. We share their commitment to deliver the highest quality, most organic and most original visual effects tools in the world. We’re proud to be joining the GenArts family and look forward to working together to create exciting new products that allow filmmakers and vídeo artists to explore the limits of their imagination and create the entertainment experiences that continue to amaze us all.”
We asked Bannerman if this decision made any difference to existing SpeedSix customers, and in the short term the answer was no. While there will be a combining of sales and marketing activities under Bannerman. Interestingly this concentration of products does open the door to GenArts moving to a more aggressive internet position. “you may have noticed we have not done much with our site in a while”, joked Bannerman, while explaining that he intended to explore a larger online presence moving forward.
GenArts intends to be at NAB this year, and have yet to decide what the best strategy is for the SpeedSix booth that has been booked, but with such big drops in attendence at such shows as CES this year. Bannerman says GenArts will be looking at this years NAB very closely to decide if tradeshows such as this worthwhile in the future.
One other area of interesting expansion is expanding the already unofficial service that GenArts provides for major clients in custom spark and plugin generation. While not committing to the details, GenArts already does some custom work and is expanding this to a more wide spread and far reaching program.
“We’re excited to announce the acquisition of SpeedSix as an initial step in our growth plan,” Hays said. “For over 12 years, GenArts has built a reputation for visual effects that inspire our customers to create the Academy Award-winning magic that has thrilled and delighted audiences around the world. We believe that the creativity and passion of our combined company will allow us to achieve new heights with our technology while leveraging our complementary businesses to create unequalled value for our customers in the years to come.”