Dvd creation and distribution ?

Any thoughts, advice, personal experiences. I'm changing my business focus away from web based video to dvd creation and distribution, online catalog and store management.

A friend of mine who works for one of the large video producers says that the web is just a fraction of their total income. I read where 9 out of 10 dollars in the adult industry is non web related.

I've been speaking with several of the larger (and smaller) video stores here in San Francisco that I can deal directly with and eliminate the middleman to distribute my dvd's at least here in SF. I plan to travel and meet directly with business owners because I want to establish a personal relationship with the management, and so far, it seems to work.

As I travel, I will speak with potential distribution channels and also film content to make sure there's enough variety to keep guys happy :)

My parnter and I are going to be working on this because I just can't do it all myself.

Of course, the bottom line is the dvd's have to sell.

Our main focus and source of income come from DVD sales on both levels, Retail and wholesale revenue. Although we just started our site about 6 months ago, the work and effort to maintain a website is much more intense to compared to selling DVD videos to retail stores, to distributors and to retail customers.

If you need any assistance, if you need any advice your welcome to contact us. david@allboysvideo.com

David Adamson
D&E Productions
www.dandevideos.com
www.dandevideo.com
www.allboysvideo.com

If the San Francisco area stores you're referring to are part of the 60 store chain owned by GVA/Adult Supersource, be aware that they are notorious for never paying anyone remotely on time.... you do eventually get paid, but it could be 6,9,12 months before you'll get a check.

Very nice looking operation going on there. I know what you mean about the web, it's resource intensive and in 2005 the traffic is really hard to come by. I've been running sites for 8 years now and let me tell you, the thrill is gone. I'm looking forward to something new without leaving the adult industry because I still enjoy the content.

I will definitely pm you guys with a couple of questions in the near future. Just finalizing the "big" picture and getting the organization in place right now. Thanks for your input !

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Originally Posted by boyfunk

If the San Francisco area stores you're referring to are part of the 60 store chain owned by GVA/Adult Supersource, be aware that they are notorious for never paying anyone remotely on time.... you do eventually get paid, but it could be 6,9,12 months before you'll get a check.

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I wasn't referring to them but that is great advice and very good to know. I can see them as part of a long term strategy, but damn, can't imagine waiting to get paid by them, and waiting, and waiting, but now, with your great piece of info, at least I know what I'm in for with them.

I'm stuck mostly to the they gay operations in and around folsom and castro. I will eventually branch out, but, you know, I just needed to know that they would work with me first before investing more time, money, and energy.

Thanks for your input !

Going the route of self distribution in the video business is tough. You not only have to be salesman, but also producer, and collector, and deal with scamming stores that will take your product on net terms, rent it out for the length of the net terms, then return it as defective. You will have to take it back if you want to ever have them sell any of your videos. To get stores to pay in front of your delivery or at delivery is tough as most stores operate on loaned cash through net terms given by distributors and studios. This is especially true for small upstart video lines. When we started promoting our video line we were told by a number of stores and distributors not to contact them until we had 5 videos or more in distribution. This did not make sense to me until i understood that any distributor is not going to want to rep your product line if it is not going to be around for a while... and they also want to see a little name demand build up on a video line before they start making calls to promote it.

Many distributors you will find are just order takers. they will rep your line, but they won't do much more than wait for the phone to ring. Find a distributor that has a good commission based sales force and you will find a company motivated to sell a hot product.

if you deal with SF stores, you will likely find that many Castro stores, Folsom stores, wont' buy from you because they have exclusive buy arrangements with GVA. You could give them the video and they still would not take it....it's part of their agreement with GVA. And GVA owns many of the adult stores in the SF area and has a broad reach into those they don't.

You will find some stores that will carry your product, but they will want very attractive terms, or very cheap prices and getting them to prepay is not easy. Not impossible, just not easy.

We do a lot of nationwide store mailings with 1 sheets, or DVD slicks on our line to keep the name recognition up and to contribute to the demand for the line.

The AVN show in January is a good outlet to sell directly, both to domestic and international stores and distributors.

Just some quick notes from our experiences

Thanks Tombarr, that is great stuff to know. I would imagine that most big cities have GVA like companies to deal with. What I looked for was strategic placement of videos. Since San Francisco has alot of places like Gramaphone (video store on Polk) that has the regular g and r rated videos in front and an adult section in back, those were the kind of places that I targeted. They get a ton of foot traffic from people all over the world who go there for gay and straight adult videos. I also spoke with Nob Hill theatre. They would be interested in the husky/cub/bear vids that I want to feature because there's just not enough titles for the demand and they also deal with clientele from all over the world.

The Folsom Gulch manager also expressed alot of interest and he may or may not be affiliated with GVA. If we can bring a quality product to them, he believes they would even be interested in some sort of "exclusive" distribution deal but who knows what that means. Still, i know they are very reputable and work with all most of the big gay production companies.

I can't get around the fact that my site is the biggest potential seller of my videos. I'm been around a long time and members since day one have asked about purchasing dvd's so that is at least a start. There's also distribution avenues like aebn and such, so lot's of potential on the internet.

The ultimate proof to legitimacy is to produce at least 5 nice quality, in demand videos to start this collection.