Who are we? Where did Imago Studios come from? 

Back in August of 1998, our little corner of the web made its grand debut. In retrospect, Imago Studios really wasn’t much of a site at the time. There was no photo membership site, no streaming video, just a basic web page that advertised our first 7 videos.& We didn’t even take credit cards – all orders had to be placed by surface mail and paid for by cash, check or money order – and then you’d get your order of VHS tapes in the mail a few days later! But it was a start and it was all ours! Those of you who have been around for some time may remember that Imago Studios actually started before the website first appeared. Remember the wanDeRers from the old Harmony days? Well, that was us. OK, to be accurate, it was Dianne in the photos! From 1993 to 1998, we submitted hundreds of photos to Harmony and appeared in dozens of magazines. In 1997, we started working with other models. At the time, we were living in very rural New York State and our access to models was quite limited. We were also not getting any compensation from Harmony, so our ability (i.e. funds) to shoot material was minimal. Then in 1998, we made the biggest change of our lives – we moved to Las Vegas! At the time, we had some basic plans to continue Imago Studios, but we really didn’t know how we would do it. By this point, however, we were pretty much fed up with the treatment we were receiving from Harmony, so we knew it would not involve them.

Nevertheless, a few months after arriving in Vegas, we started looking for models. The first person we spoke with was Karen Johnson in April of 1998, but we would not actually work with her until several months later. The first girl we worked with in Vegas was Alexa Close, a free spirited local college student, in May of ’98. She was quickly followed by roommates Mary Olson & Katie Ladd, then Mia Chen and Erica Lee. (Random memory – Mia Chen was actually 30 minutes late for our scheduled meeting and we almost left before she arrived – oh how the future of Imago Studios might have been different if we hadn’t worked with her!). So in the course of a few weeks during May & June of 1998, we shot our first 7 videos and used up almost all of our life savings! And we still didn’t know what we were going to do with the videos – we didn’t have any outlet to market them!

But fate would shine on us. We had recently made friends with another couple who was running a foot fetish site (the now defunct Rock’s Page) and they helped us out. They told us to forget about working through any other company and to do it on our own. They also ran a web hosting company and initially hosted our site. The web was young and HTML editors were not popular yet (plus we didn’t have any money to buy software), so we got a book, “Teach Yourself HTML in 7 Days,” and hand-coded the pages in a Notepad editor. And so in August of 1998, Imago Studios went “live” – and we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. Again, we got lucky and got one of the coveted featured links on the late Mr. T’s site. That got us the traffic we needed and, much to our surprise, a few days later we had the first video orders in our mailbox. We were off and running! In retrospect, we were extremely lucky to find four great models right from the start. Mia Chen, in particular, was a great find. She would go on to work several more times over the next few years. IS03, the video we shot on her first day working with us, remains our best selling video ever.

Unfortunately, things didn’t remain rosy for long. The first several months were challenging, to say the least. But we continued to shoot videos and banked our future on Imago Studios eventually succeeding. Our savings was gone, so we were paying all expenses for the site from our “regular” jobs and were just scraping by. By January of 1999, things were bad enough that we considered giving it up completely. But luckily, March was a banner month for us – we sold more than twice as many videos as any previous month – and we have no idea why! It just happened. So we continued on. In a few more months, our sales nearly doubled again. In July of 1999, we added the photo membership site. Up until that point, we were only shooting enough stills to advertise the videos, we were not shooting any photo sets, so this was a big change for us. When it opened, the photo site was updated once a week on Saturday, updates consisted of only 25 to 35 photos, the cost was $8.95 a month – oh how things have changed!

Over the next few years, much to our amazement, Imago Studios continued to grow and grow and GROW. Somehow, the little site we started with all amateur girls struck a chord with a lot of people – people from all over the world. Our customer loyalty has been amazing. We have members who have been with us since the start, and others who have purchased every video we have produced. We now have a huge international following with members from almost every corner of the globe, and are currently one of the largest and most successful bondage sites on the web.

So what part of Imago Studios’ success makes us most proud? Well, a few things come to mind.

First and foremost is the many great amateur models we have worked with. When we started, we knew we wanted nothing to do with professional fetish models or porn stars. Even back then sites were full of them, and it is even worse now. We loved what Harmony once was in its early days – all amateur models & real life bondage enthusiasts. So we decided right from the start we would not work with the girls everyone else worked with – we would seek out our own talent: amateur girls who had done little if any prior modeling and often had no experience with bondage. Over the years we have not wavered from that foundation. We have also been extremely lucky in this regard. We have found & worked with almost 300 girls – many of whom have been fantastic finds.  To name just a few of the stand outs: Mia Chen, Holly Everson, Britney Damon, Molly Bronte, Dina Davis, Renee Rose, Kara Carlson, Jasmine Martinez, Belle Sagonis, Katarina Wilski, Corrine Delamonte, Lainie Moon, Naleyja Diaz, Giana Gray, Kylie Adams, Ophelia Keating, Jesenia Stone, Augusta Jones, Jamie Braun, Mia Nelson, Katherine West, Leah Powers, Daisy Daniels, Kristen Moore, etc, etc, etc. Many of these girls worked with us for years and several of them have become very good friends of ours – we’ve even gone to weddings and baby showers!

Second, we are very proud of our commitment to running Imago Studios as a professional, high quality site. We may work with amateur girls, but the quality of our product is among the best you will find and our history of great service is unmatched. In particular, we are extremely proud of the fact that in all the years we have run the site, we have never missed a single update – not one! Despite computer failures, family emergencies & deaths, and travel to various parts of the world (sometimes without internet access!), we have always made sure the updates were there – either right on time or even a bit early. Of course, now that we have tooted our own horn on this, we have probably jinxed ourselves!

We are also proud that we have stayed true to our original vision for Imago Studios (read more in the blog entry “We are a Bondage Site – Not a Porn Site”). Besides not wanting to work with fetish or porn models, we wanted to produce material that was fun and lighthearted. We did not want to do material that was overly sexual, degrading or violent. Sure, we probably could make more money if we catered to those elements, but that is not what we are about. And we are truly proud that so many of our customers have stayed with us through the years – that you have felt our site is worthy of your time and money. We greatly appreciate your support and suggestions over the years that have allowed Imago Studios to grow and develop into the site it is today.

So what does the future hold? Well, that remains to be seen, but we will say, we plan to be around for a long time to come!