ShareGrid Online Camera Sharing Marketplace Acquired by Backstage

Acquisition

by Jeff LochJanuary 21^st, 2022

ShareGrid, the camera-sharing community to buy/rent/sell professional photography and film gear, was recently acquired by Backstage, one of the leading freelancer marketplace and application suites for creators.

Acquisitions in the filmmaking community are flying lately, with the recent purchase of Audix by Vitec last week!

This time, Backstage acquired ShareGrid, but it will stay a standalone business, and not many things should change for existing users.

Who is ShareGrid?

ShareGrid was founded in 2015 with a simple mission in mind: allowing filmmakers and content creators to rent their gear between each other at an affordable price. Indeed, we all have a bunch of equipment that is partially not running 24/7, so why not make some money by renting it to other creators while you don’t use it.

A couple of years later, you can also buy/sell your equipment on the platform that grew into a community of more than 150.000 creators in the US.

Backstage acquires ShareGrid

Backstage is a New York-based company founded in 1960. Their platform is the “number one resource for actors and performers to find roles” with more than 10M+ members. Over time, Backstage also started to post jobs for freelancers, crew, film/video/TV production, and so on.

Last year, Backstage acquired a couple of companies, including FilmFreeway, Coverfly, Voice 123, StarNow, and Mandy Network. As you can tell, they try to diversify and expand their suite of content creation tools and talent pool of creative professionals.

To further extend their services, Backstage started this new year by acquiring ShareGrid. According to ShareGrid’s CPO and co-founder Arash Shiva:

By joining forces with Backstage, we can grow our client base alongside theirs and create a full suite of secure and high-quality tools to help creatives attain their personal and professional goals

Arash Shiva, ShareGrid

No details were given about the acquisition price or conditions.

The acquisition of ShareGrid marks Backstage’s expansion into the $10 billion production rentals business in the United States.

To learn more about it, please visit ShareGrid’s website here.

What do you think about this acquisition? Did you already use ShareGrid to rent or sell some gear? Don’t hesitate to let us know in the comments down below!