Client: The Duffy Archive
Sector: Fine art photography — archive, print sales and licensing
What we did: The complete archive, sales, loans and licensing system — a decade of development and counting
Duffy was one of the great British photographers — the man behind the lightning-bolt Aladdin Sane cover and some of the defining images of the sixties and seventies. His archive is a working business: museum-grade photographic history that sells limited-edition prints worldwide, licenses images to publishers, and loans work to galleries.
Running that takes more than a filing cabinet and a spreadsheet. It takes a system that knows every image, every print, and exactly which box each one is in.
What we built
The digital catalogue. Every image in the archive, tagged and searchable, with imagery hosted on AWS S3 so the catalogue stays fast however large it grows.
Physical stock control by QR code. Every print, frame, magazine and storage container carries a QR label generated by the system. Scan a container to see what's inside; scan a print into a new location when it moves; scan a frame to see which edition it holds. A physical archive of thousands of objects, findable in seconds.
Limited-edition print sales. Edition numbering tracked print by print, quotes that become multi-currency invoices, payments and allocations, client statements, picking lists and delivery notes — the full fine-art sales workflow.
Gallery loans. When prints go out to galleries and exhibitions, the system tracks what's out, where it is and when it's due back — with loan reports and location status that updates when work returns.
Licensing. A licensing calculator prices image use by product, term and fee schedule, turns enquiries into quotes, quotes into sales, and generates the paperwork.
The client lightbox. Clients log in to a web portal to browse curated selections, build a basket and send enquiries — with per-client control over which images each visitor may see. And for putting proposals together, we built a drag-and-drop report builder that assembles photo reports in the browser, recently rebuilt around S3-hosted images for speed.
The outcome
Around 1,500 master images and more than 6,000 individual edition prints under management — every one of them locatable, saleable, loanable and licensable from one system that's been growing with the archive for a decade.
"The bespoke FileMaker database developed by Flare Software is the backbone of the Duffy Archive, driving every facet of our daily operations. The system seamlessly handles granular inventory management, stock taking, multi-currency invoicing, and complex licensing agreements. Additionally, it provides our team with unlimited content sorting with PDF generation, QR code capabilities, and secure online client access. This truly unique system reflects the Flare Software team's deep understanding of our business needs and their consistent ability to deliver exceptional results."
— Chris Duffy, CEO, The Duffy Archive
Technologies used
Claris FileMaker, FileMaker Go with QR-code scanning, AWS S3 image hosting, JavaScript web-viewer tools (galleries and the report builder), client web portal, multi-currency invoicing.
Got a collection to manage?
Archives, galleries, collections, hire stock — anywhere physical objects meet commercial records, we can make the two agree.
Get in touch or call us on 0330 113 0958.