OUR STORY.

The story of Rimagine told by Lorenz, Christoph and John Ray, the three founders of the company.

Jul 2004		Lorenz: "In 2004, while Christoph was working with a German machine manufacturing company, John Ray and I were working with COL|China Online, a Shanghai-based IT Company. We casually chatted about the fact that China literally is the factory of the world, and most products actually come from there. We talked about the need for a giant and professional photography service company in China, which would take photos of all these products. After doing some research in the Chinese photography market, we found only a few  small single-photographer studios, but not the kind of giant we expected to find in the first place.”
Aug 2004		John Ray: "Instead of blindly starting a new company, we used our previous business experience and called some companies in Europe. We knew they produced their products in China, but still did the photography work in their home country. We told them they could not only save on time, but also on money and logistics by doing their photography in China. The companies we approached instantly liked the idea. Very soon they started sending us samples (directly from their warehouses in China to our studio in Shanghai) so that we could photograph them."
Sep 2004		Christoph: "Two weeks after our first talks, the first box full of products arrived at Lorenz's apartment. Without being photographers ourselves, or having any previous experience, we realized we had to act quickly! few found a photographer through a local newspaper, and created the first photos in Lorenz's apartment. The client liked the images and asked for a quote and time estimate to shoot another 350 products! Wow! Right away we saw the potential, we looked at each other and immediately agreed that ‘yes’, we wanted this new adventure! So, we quit our jobs, rented a small office space, bought a camera and a couple of computers. This was the beginning of Rimagine.
Oct 2004		John Ray: "Our first office was a small 120 sqm space which I found on Yongjia road. The idea was to hit the ground running. First get a small place and then look for a bigger studio to meet our needs. Very soon, we had more than eight talents.  We ran into problems because our office couldn’t support the electricity for all the computers, cameras and studio lights in this minuscule office. We had a very cold winter that year, to save electricity (and not overload the fuse box) we had to work with our coats on in the office and retouched images with gloves on (no kidding!). We affectionately christened our first office 'Our Little Shit-hole'. Read the first ever published article about Rimagine here.
May 2005		Lorenz: "After 8 months of intensive searching, we found a great photo studio location on Wang Han Du Lu- the same studio we are in right now. We renovated it for three months to make it perfect before moving in. Moving from a tiny and unprofessional location into a custom-built and high-end photography studio was a great feeling for the entire team. Everybody suddenly saw: ‘How cool, the idea really works!’"
Aug 2005		Christoph: "We changed our claim from "Product Photography for Clients Worldwide" to "Rimagine - The Photography Company" after some of our clients kept saying: 'You guys operate actually not like other studios, and also not like other agencies .. you are more like.. a real photography company"! We realized that we apparently did things a little bit differently. Also, at that time, we did not simply just do product photography as we had originally planned, but a lot more: Interiors, exteriors, people, industrial photography and so on."
Dec 2005		Lorenz: "We gained more and more focus on the kind of companies we worked with: mostly our clients were manufacturers, trade or retail companies which produce, source or distribute products in or out of China. At that time, we already had several long-term clients with dedicated client teams, but we also worked with many small-to-medium sized companies just on a per-project-basis. Such clients only used us one to ten times a year. After our first year, we saw our core competence in managing photo shootings - no matter what sort - in an efficient and organized way."
Oct 2006		John Ray: "After two years, we provided the services of photography, retouching, graphic design and print management. An integrated A-Z service was demanded (and appreciated) by most of our main and long-term clients. They just prefer to have one reliable service partner - especially in a 'crazy' and 'chaotic' service landscape such as China.
Jan 2007		Christoph: "Photography is clearly our Forte! This is where we come from, and this is what we do. All our other services can be considered as 'modules' - some clients only want us to photograph and send them retouched and print-ready files. Other clients really enjoy the fact that we can do not only photographs, but that we also can produce final artwork files for their various packaging. They send us their own-brand manuals, and we do line-extensions on a daily basis.
Jul 2007		Lorenz: "Rimagine not only emerged to be a magnet for great creative talents, but also for interesting projects. We now do full-blown catalogue productions, including location scouting, model castings, set design and building, and so on, but still everything still revolves around 'Photography'. We don't do any jobs where we have not created the images ourselves, even if the clients want us to. This makes us really unique in the creative market within China.