TL;DR
Before building Stockpress, we ran an agency. Working closely with marketing, creative, and content teams, we kept seeing the same file-related problems repeat — regardless of team size or industry. Existing tools were either too simple to support real collaboration or too complex to be usable day to day. Stockpress was built to solve a practical, lived problem: helping teams find, share, and use digital assets of all types without slowing their work down.
1. Why Digital Asset Management problems are so common across teams
Modern teams create a lot of content.
Marketing, creative, and content teams work across campaigns, channels, formats, and timelines — often at the same time. Files move constantly between people, tools, and platforms. They’re edited, reused, approved, shared externally, and revisited months later.
When file management and Digital Asset Management systems work, they just quietly fit in with your work. When they don’t, they quietly slow everything down.
The challenge isn’t just volume. It’s coordination. As soon as multiple people rely on the same assets, managing and finding files becomes a shared problem — not an individual one.
From Jessica Storry, Stockpress: “When file management and Digital Asset Management systems work, they just quietly fit in with your work. When they don’t, they quietly slow everything down.”
2. What we kept seeing while running an agency
Before Stockpress existed, the four founders ran a digital agency. We worked with a wide range of clients and teams, each with their own workflows — but the same questions kept coming up:
- “Is this the final version of this file?”
- “Can you resend the file?”
- “Where does this file actually live?”
- “Which file are we supposed to use?”
Files were scattered across Dropbox, Google Drive, email threads, and chat messages. Every project seemed to start with a file hunt. Every delivery ended with uncertainty.
This wasn’t a one-off frustration.
It was a pattern.
And while it didn’t reflect badly on the teams, it reflected badly on the tools they were forced to work around. In short, managing files caused friction.
3. The tools teams were forced to choose between
What we saw was that teams were often choosing between two imperfect options.
File-sharing tools
Shared drives and file-sharing platforms were familiar, and relatively easy to adopt. They worked well early on, especially for small teams and short-lived projects.
But as collaboration increased, they struggled to provide:
- An easy way to find the files teams needed
- Context around how files should be used
- Confidence in versions and approvals
- A reliable way to support reuse at scale
Traditional Digital Asset Management platforms
On the other end of the spectrum, enterprise DAMs offered structure, governance, and control — but at a cost.
They were often:
- Expensive to implement
- Complex to configure
- Dependent on costly, dedicated administrators
- Heavy relative to how teams actually worked day to day
Teams weren’t choosing the “wrong” tools.
They were choosing between mismatches.
4. The real problem wasn’t the people
At some point, the pattern became clear.
The teams weren’t disorganized.
They weren’t careless.
They weren’t doing things “wrong.”
The tools simply weren’t designed for how modern teams actually work.
Marketing, creative, and content teams move fast. They collaborate constantly. They need access to files wherever they are, without adding friction or process just to stay organized.
When tools get in the way, people work around them — even if that means more manual effort, more messages, and more uncertainty.
5. Why we decided to build Stockpress
We didn’t set out to build a company.
We were looking for something we could use with our own clients — a quick to stand up, easy to use solution that balanced structure with usability, and collaboration with simplicity. We couldn’t find one.
So we built what we needed.
Stockpress wasn’t created to replace every tool, or to impose new workflows. It was built to fit naturally into how teams already worked — helping them stay organized without slowing them down.
Not as outsiders trying to fix a market, but as insiders solving our own daily frustrations.
From Ian Parkes, Stockpress: “Stockpress wasn’t created to replace every tool, or to impose new workflows. It was built to fit naturally into how teams already worked — helping them stay organized without slowing them down.”
6. The principles that shaped Stockpress
Running an agency taught us a few lessons that continue to shape how we think about Digital Asset Management:
- Tools should adapt to people, not the other way around
- Organization only works if it reflects real workflows
- Adoption usually matters more than configuration
- Finding and sharing files should feel obvious, not technical
These weren’t abstract ideas. They came directly from seeing where teams struggled — and where they succeeded.
From Jessica Storry, Stockpress: “For the majority of teams, and platforms – adoption matters more than configuration”
7. Why this perspective still matters today
The same problems we experienced then are still showing up now.
Teams outgrow file-sharing tools as the pace of asset creation and the need for reuse increases.
They regret DAM choices when systems don’t match reality.
They feel friction when structure is formed before habits.
Understanding why these problems exist helps teams make better decisions — not just about tools, but about how they work together.
That’s why these conversations matter beyond any single product.
8. A closing reflection
We know what it’s like to try to deliver great work while spending too much time just trying to find it.
Stockpress began as a way to fix that problem for ourselves — and it turns out we weren’t alone.
Thousands of teams now use it for the same reason: to spend less time managing files, and more time creating great work.
Because before it’s iconic, it’s organized.
And sometimes, the best ideas start by fixing the challenge yourself.
