Article

Consumer brands and photo studios: get paid for your records

By TrustPast

Updated November 7, 2026

A small consumer brand and a commercial photo studio look like different businesses. One sells candles, coffee or skincare. The other shoots them. Both spend their days quoting, briefing, revising and getting things approved, and both keep years of it in spreadsheets, inboxes and a CRM. This page is for either one, at the size of a founder and a small team.

What owners in both usually don’t know is that the back-office trail has a price, not the products or the pictures. A buyer licenses working records like these to train AI models, and it pays for how decisions were made: why a supplier quote was turned down, why a shoot was priced at three days instead of two, why a wholesale account went quiet. The same idea, worked through four trades, is on what data buyers want from a trade business.

Here is what each kind of company keeps, what Polyshares says it wants, what stays out, how the price is set, and which programme fits.

The records a consumer brand or photo studio keeps

Our examples, not a buyer’s list. Polyshares decides what it licenses after reading a sample.

In a photo studio

The shoot quote. A commercial photography quote breaks a job into parts most clients never see: the creative fee, the shoot days, the assisting photographer and stylist days, the studio or location, props, the number of final images, the retouching per image, and the usage, meaning where the client may run the pictures and for how long. Usage is the line clients argue about most, and the quote versions show the argument. Our estimates and quotes page explains why the drafts of a quote say more than the signed one.

The brief and the shot list. The client’s brief says what they want. The studio’s shot list says what it thinks that means: 40 set-ups, the hero shot first, the lifestyle shots on day two. The emails between the two are where the job got defined.

The selects and the retouch notes. After the shoot, the client picks from contact sheets. Then come rounds of notes: “warmer,” “lose the reflection on the lid,” “the label must be legible.” Each round is a small negotiation between taste and the brand book. A layered work file holds the result, step by step.

The booking pipeline. Every inquiry, the quote sent, whether it booked, and why not when it didn’t. Budget, dates, a cheaper studio, a client who went in-house.

In a consumer brand

The supplier quotes. Three factories quote the same jar. One is cheaper with a higher minimum order. One is slower. One failed the sample. The spreadsheet that compares them, and the email that chose one, is a buying decision with the reasoning attached.

The landed-cost and pricing sheets. Unit cost, freight, duty, packaging, the margin target, the retail price, the wholesale price. Then the revisions when freight doubled or a retailer asked for a better margin. A pricing sheet with five years of tabs is a record of a brand deciding what it could charge.

The product development file. The brief for a new scent, the samples, the testers’ comments, the decision to launch or drop it. The dropped products matter as much as the launched ones.

The wholesale CRM. Each stockist as an account: the first email, the samples sent, the opening order, the reorders, the reasons an account stopped. Our CRM records page explains which parts of a CRM show how a company sold and which are only contact details.

The returns and support queue. Why customers sent things back, sorted by product and by year. A rising return reason that led to a packaging change is a full decision cycle on file.

How a quote became a delivered job is what these records tell together. In a studio: a brief arrives, a quote goes out at three days, the client asks for two, version two drops the lifestyle set-ups and narrows the usage, the shoot runs, the client asks for twelve extra retouches, and a change note prices them. In a brand: a retailer asks for a lower wholesale price, the pricing sheet shows what that does to margin, a supplier is asked to requote, the order goes ahead at a smaller first run. Either way, no single file has the whole story. The quote versions, the emails and the CRM hold it between them.

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What counts, in the buyer’s own words

Polyshares doesn’t publish a page about consumer brands or photo studios. Here is what its pages do say, read against these files.

On who qualifies, its home page says “Any company with real operating history, in any sector,” and lists “retail” and “professional services” among the sectors. It adds: “The length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.”

On what counts, the home page lists “The working record of the business. Slack, email, Drive, spreadsheets, CRM history, support tickets, design files, call recordings, accounting and ERP exports.” Design files are on that list by name, beside the spreadsheets and the CRM.

On the reasoning, its data licensing page says: “It is in reasoning that was captured while the work happened.” And: “A thread where two people disagree about a quote and work it out carries judgment that cannot be manufactured.” Usage terms argued over three emails, or a wholesale price argued over five, are that kind of thread.

Polyshares’ guides describe the tools these companies run. On Adobe Creative Cloud: work files “keep layers, masks, artboards and linked assets, so a single layered file shows how a finished image was built, not only the final pixels. Folders of campaign files also show how a brand’s assets are revised over time.” On HubSpot: a CRM “ties each contact, company and deal to a timeline of emails, calls, meetings and notes,” and “Custom properties show how a specific business qualifies leads and prices work.” On Shopify: product catalogs “show how merchants describe and stock goods, and they pair directly with the orders that sold them.” On Google Photos: company libraries “usually hold site, product and event photos taken on phones, with capture dates.”

On a brand’s Instagram, the guide says an account “pairs photos and short video with captions, dates and audience response,” and that “Direct messages can be left out by choosing specific types of information instead of everything.” Keep in mind what the same buyer says caps a record’s value: “material that is already public, published, scraped, or widely syndicated.” Published posts and product pages are public. The briefs, quotes and notes behind them are not.

What is never included

Our page on what is never included covers every kind of company. For brands and studios, these are the places to check.

Customers’ personal details. A brand’s order history is full of names, addresses and emails. Polyshares’ data handling page says “Names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers, and addresses are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record.” The mailing list is contact details, not reasoning; as our own advice, leave it out of what you count.

Payment details. Polyshares’ Shopify guide says exports “carry captured payment records but not authorization data, and full card numbers are never part of what is needed.”

A client’s images and brand material. For a photo studio, this is the first question. Some agreements give the client a licence to use the pictures and leave copyright with the photographer. Others assign everything to the client. Polyshares’ legal answer page says material held on behalf of a client under an agreement that assigns ownership to the client “cannot be licensed regardless of value, and only the contracts separate the two.” Its home page says the license “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” Our page on client-owned work and NDAs sets out how to sort the folders. Ask counsel.

People in the pictures. Model releases, faces, the names on the release forms. As our own advice, raise anything with people in it on the call before you assume.

Unreleased products under an NDA. A client’s launch shot six months early, or a supplier’s formula sent in confidence. The contract decides, and counsel reads it.

How de-identification works

Polyshares publishes the order on its data handling page. First, nothing moves: “Intake asks for record counts, not files or exports. Nothing leaves your systems until Polyshares has made an offer and you have accepted it.”

Then the specialist PII partner removes identifiers, and “Roles, timestamps, and the work itself are kept.” A shoot quote keeps its days, its image count, its usage terms and its versions. It loses the client’s name. A wholesale account keeps its order history and the reason it lapsed. It loses the store owner’s name and address.

Then a person reads. “Someone on the team reads the anonymized sample before Polyshares prices the record.” If anything still reads as identifying, “the record goes back for another pass before pricing continues.”

Buyers see a code, not you. Polyshares says “Listings are published without the company’s name, website, people, or exact locations.” Under “What we do not do” it lists: “No contacting your customers or staff.” A brand name in a studio’s files is the obvious thing to ask about on the call. The steps are set out in full on how de-identification works.

What decides the price

There is one published range, and Polyshares puts it on its home page: typical deals run “$100K to $2M and above” (indicative, not an offer). Three things decide where a brand or a studio lands in it. In the words of Polyshares’ answer page on worth, the position “depends on the depth of operating history, how much reasoning is visible in it, and whether the company can grant clean rights.” Years, visible reasoning, rights: count those before you count files.

The same page names what moves the number up: “Length of continuous operating history,” “Visible disagreement and correction,” “A specialized domain,” and “clean rights.” And what caps it: “A short operating history,” records the company “holds but does not own,” personal information “woven through the record in a way that cannot be cleanly stripped,” and material that is already public.

For a photo studio, clean rights is the deciding factor: years of quotes and notes that are plainly the studio’s own are easier to price than a folder of client images. For a brand, personal information is the one to watch, because the order history and the CRM are full of it; Polyshares says stripping it is its work, not yours.

Polyshares publishes four closed licenses, each a “Perpetual exclusive license to the operational record” and “Anonymized before delivery”: a roofing company at $450,000, a general contractor at $300,000, a solar company at $275,000 and a global marketing agency at $110,000 (indicative, not an offer). None is a brand or a photo studio. Polyshares says: “We look at the record before we price it. We do not pay for something we have not seen.” Each factor is explained on what decides the price.

Which programme fits

Polyshares is the programme for US companies with 29 or fewer people. Most independent brands and photo studios sit there. A company with 30 or more people, now or at its peak, or one based outside the US, goes to a different programme. Our estimate asks how many people work at the company and names the programme that fits your headcount. The programme page for 29 or fewer has the detail.

What Polyshares publishes about the deal: “No fee, no commission. We pay you.” A license “is not a sale,” and you keep “the business and the underlying data.” Payment is “Net 30 to 60 once the data is approved, anonymized, and delivered.” Polyshares also says a company should have its own counsel review any license before signing. So do we.

A few other kinds of company keep records with the same bones. Digital health companies also sell to consumers and keep the support queue and the release notes that show what customers pushed back on. AI product companies keep a CRM of trials and deals, and a trail of product decisions, much like a brand’s development file. And game studios run rounds of art review and feedback, the way a photo studio runs rounds of retouch notes.

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Questions and answers

Does the buyer want our product photos?

Not the published ones. Polyshares lists material that is already public, published, scraped or widely syndicated among the things that cap or kill a record’s value. The quotes, briefs, rounds of notes and layered work files behind the photos are a different matter.

Do our customers’ orders go to the buyer with their names on?

No. Polyshares says names, emails, phone numbers, account numbers and addresses are removed or replaced by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any buyer sees the record. Its Shopify guide says full card numbers are never part of what is needed.

Can a photo studio license images it shot for a client?

Only the contracts say. Polyshares says material held for a client under an agreement that assigns ownership to the client cannot be licensed regardless of value. Have counsel read your usage and assignment terms before you count those years.

Does the CRM count?

Polyshares lists CRM history as operational data. Its HubSpot guide says a CRM ties each contact, company and deal to a timeline of emails, calls, meetings and notes, from first touch to closed won or closed lost. Polyshares decides what it licenses.

How much do companies like ours get paid?

Polyshares says typical deals run $100K to $2M and above (indicative, not an offer). It reviews the record before it quotes, so the range is not a price for your company.

Do we have to clean the files first?

No. Polyshares says identifying fields are stripped as part of preparing the data and that handling that is its responsibility, not yours. Intake asks for record counts, not files.