Haim Ariav
Sponsored By: Desktop Darkroom
Sponsored by Desktop Darkroom
Glossy Finish was founded in the Spring of 2006 by Haim Ariav, a professional photographer with years of experience in website development and stock photography. It was acquired by Lifetouch in December 2013 and Haim, along with a partner, purchased it back from Lifetouch in November 2017. It is now an independent company again and has seen year over year growth into a multimillion-dollar business.
Haim's vision of combining amateur sports and professional photography came from watching and coaching his young children play sports, while never having much more to show for it other than the traditional team & individual photo or some snapshots taken by another parent. With this void in his family’s photo album, a simple idea, with a huge opportunity, began.
Using the power and speed of digital photography, a team of Glossy Finish professional sports photographers and customer service ambassadors cover the action and capture the passion of youth sporting events. The photos are then uploaded in near real-time into a state-of-the-art Mobile Photo Lab that allows the families and athletes to come inside to view, purchase and take home their photo products that same day!
As part of Haim’s commitment to giving back to the sports photography community, he co-founded GFcrew, a community, process, and app that allows independent photographers the opportunity to leverage their own talents and get pre-paid to capture action photos. It is now a thriving group with over 4,500 action sports photographers.
Haim graduated from the Brooks Institute of Photography before moving to New York City to pursue his dream of becoming a fashion and beauty photographer. After assisting several well-known and highly respected photographers he moved to Milan, Italy for a couple of years to start his own career as a shooter. After returning to the United States, Haim continued shooting both editorial and advertising assignments before joining the Internet craze that was just beginning. To meet the new-media demands of his fashion and beauty clients he founded Muffin-Head Productions, an award-winning website development company in Silicon Alley.
Having successfully grown Muffin-Head, he sold it to DVC, a marketing and promotions company. Haim stayed on with DVC and ran their interactive creative group until he left to help start a21, a digital content marketplace for the professional creative community. a21 acquired SuperStock, the parent company of several image-based companies, where Haim was the President and Chief Creative Officer.
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