marketingdigital asset management
How Collage is Reshaping Asset Management for Growing Brands
You’re stepping into the CEO role at Collage as the company enters its next phase of growth. What’s your vision for Collage moving forward?
Collage was built on a simple belief: managing important brand content shouldn’t feel heavy, complicated, or out of reach for growing teams.
As we enter our next phase, our vision is to become the modern infrastructure layer supporting how brands organize, distribute, and ultimately get more value from their content. We’re focused on doing the core work of Digital Asset Management exceptionally well — search, organization, and sharing — while removing the enterprise complexity that has defined the category for a decade.
We’ve grown consistently by serving teams who felt priced out or overwhelmed by legacy systems. Moving forward, we’ll double down on that momentum: improving migration experiences, strengthening our distribution capabilities, and investing in performance and simplicity.
How do you define Digital Asset Management today, and where do legacy platforms fall short?
At its core, Digital Asset Management should be the system of record for brand content — the place where assets are structured, searchable, and controlled, ultimately with the purpose of optimizing the value created by that content.
Historically, though, DAM platforms were designed more like vaults — places to store and protect files. Distribution was treated as a secondary feature. And over time, that inward focus created layers of complexity and rising costs.
Today, content flows outward constantly — to agencies, retail partners, sales teams, distributors, media outlets, technology platforms. If distribution isn’t central to the DAM, teams default to workarounds: email attachments, shared drives, Slack threads, ad-hoc file transfers. That fragmentation is where control and efficiency break down.
A modern DAM needs to function as an engine, not just a vault. It should activate content — making it easy to find, permission, package, and distribute without adding operational overhead.
Where legacy platforms often fall short is assuming every team needs enterprise-level complexity. Many growing organizations don’t. They need speed, clarity, and workflows that match how content actually moves.
That’s the shift we believe the category needs to embrace. By shifting focus to what we believe matters most for these teams, we can fundamentally make the platform more affordable without sacrificing impact for the vast majority of brands out there.
Collage describes itself as “distribution-first.” What does that mean in practice?
Distribution-first means designing DAM around how content is actually used — not just how it’s stored. At Collage, we focus on two core audiences:
- The teams who create and manage assets
- The audiences who consume and amplify them
By stripping away unnecessary complexity and streamlining distribution, we make modern DAM fundamentally more cost-effective, scalable and user-friendly. Practically, that shows up in capabilities like branded distribution portals, dynamic share links, asset embeds, flexible permissions, and modern search. Instead of responding to constant requests, teams can proactively enable access — reducing friction, eliminating bottlenecks, and accelerating brand amplification.
What problem does Collage solve that other DAM platforms struggle with?
We solve the mismatch between modern marketing teams and legacy software expectations.
Many growing brands are managing thousands of assets, collaborating with agencies, dealers, distributors, or partners — but they don’t have enterprise budgets or supporting IT departments.
Legacy DAM platforms often assume both. Collage removes the friction around:
- High contract costs
- Complex platforms that are difficult to adopt
- Fragmented systems for managing content
- Inability to activate content even if centralized and organized
We provide the essential capabilities teams actually use — search, tagging, portals, custom metadata, structured organization — without forcing them into a heavyweight system.
That balance of power and simplicity is where we see the most traction.
Who is Collage built for, and how does it fit into the broader DAM market?
Collage operates squarely in the Digital Asset Management category, but our philosophy is different. While many legacy vendors prioritize enterprise breadth and highly specialized functionality, we emphasize:
● Simplicity over complexity
● Access and distribution
● Practical value over feature accumulation
Rather than building another feature-heavy system, we designed Collage from the ground up to focus on essential functionality with real impact. That focus allows us to deliver a powerful DAM experience without the cost or complexity that has deterred so many teams. That makes Collage especially well-suited for growing brands that have historically been underserved or priced out of DAM altogether — as well as modern teams that want speed, clarity, and control without enterprise overhead.
How do you think DAM needs to evolve to keep pace with modern marketing workflows?
Digital Asset Management needs to become more connected, more intelligent, and more flexible.
The future of DAM is less about managing files and more about orchestrating access — ensuring the right people can find and use the right assets at the right time.
First, platforms must integrate seamlessly with the tools marketers already rely on — design software, CMS platforms, automation tools, and perhaps most importantly, AI systems. DAM can’t be an isolated repository; it should facilitate a broader content ecosystem.
Second, search and metadata management must continue to evolve. As asset libraries grow, discovery becomes mission-critical. Teams need fast, precise ways to surface what matters. This is also essential for fully leveraging the emerging AI capabilities.
And finally, AI will reshape expectations entirely. Most of what we see as AI in the category will become commoditized. However, the platforms that evolve distribution into AI-ready infrastructure will be the ones that deliver lasting value.
The companies that embrace this shift — from vault to engine, from storage to orchestration — will define the next generation of DAM.
What does success look like for Collage over the next few years?
Success means making DAM feel approachable, effective, and indispensable for modern teams. If Collage can help brands reduce friction, save time, and get more value from their content - while reducing complexity - we're doing our job.
Ultimately, our goal is to redefine expectations for DAM: simpler, more affordable, and built for how content actually moves in today’s organizations now and in the future.
