Image Locations Seeks to Streamline a Clunky Industry

On a cloudy November day six years ago, Paul Kim drove his silver Porsche Boxster up to the gate of a multimillion-dollar Malibu beach house just as the owner was leaving. Motioning for him to stop, Kim, the founder of Image Locations, asked to use the property for a Land’s End catalog photo shoot, explaining that a deal for a nearby home had just fallen through. The owner waved Kim in to talk with his wife. The shoot took place the next day, with the Pacific Ocean shimmering in the background. Three months later, Image Locations scheduled the house again for a TV commercial for Honda, and Kim plans another there for Marshalls in early January.

Los Angeles-based Image Locations is one of about 150 location agencies across the country that time-crunched magazine editors, TV producers, and filmmakers hire to secure locations for their productions. Unlike location scouts, who solely seek out locations, location agencies help manage the entire shoot, work with property owners, and often provide scouts themselves with portfolios of properties. It’s a tiny, informal industry, and no numbers exist for the size of the market. Many location agencies are one-person operations, and even established players -- such as Universal Locations and Cast Locations, both founded in the early 1980s -- have only four full-time employees each. With 12 employees and plans to hire three more in 2011, Kim is trying to become the industry’s go-to service. “I never really said, ‘Hey, these are my competitors, let me beat them.’ I just made us more streamlined, more technologically advanced, far more visual and accessible,” says Kim, 39, with characteristic confidence.