SOUTH PARIS, Maine - All Boys Distribution has made some changes in preparation for a new year president Rob Ragan said he expects to be both challenging and rewarding.
After a review of ABD's studio lineup - and after listening to retail customers, which Ragan said "are the key to our business" - ABD released some of the studios it was representing. He said stores didn't want the product from those studios.
"I'm done trying different types of content to see what's going to move, and most importantly, what's not," he said. "My customers are the larger chain stores throughout the country, and they just won't carry the films or the studios that shoot anything that contains fisting or water sports. Rather than try and convince them that some of the films from those studios don't contain that stuff, I just decided that it would be within all of our best interests to let [those studios] find other distribution opportunities with companies that do have a clientele for that type of content, as I just do not."
Ragan also said that he plans to avoid studios that have been distributed by other U.S.-based distributors, as "it's just too damn confusing for my customers to figure out who this studio or that studio is with this month, or what titles are available though this distributor or that one. It's just a mess with the way these studios are always looking for greener grass. I owe it to my customers to provide the best possible studios at the best possible cost for them, and to make sure I don't have to take back half of the sale from overstock because the film didn't sell."
All Boys vice president Craig Rivas said his meetings with customers during AVN's recent Adult Entertainment Expo cemented some suspicions he's harbored for a while.
"We've become very in tune to what our customers are seeking, and after meeting with most of them at the show last week, we're very happy to say they're ecstatic as to the studios we have kept," he said. "Because of that, we were able to increase our new release draws on street date by 30 percent on auto[-order], which tells us what we've done is the absolute right thing."
The studios remaining on All Boys' roster include OTB Video, Rentboy, Boykakke, San Diego Boy, Broke Straight Boys/Blu Media, Seymore Dicks Presents, D & E Productions, Cruising For Sex, Raw Loads, Older for Me, Blacks on Daddies and ABD's studio division, Bad Boy Productions. The company plans to release one new title a week beginning Jan. 22 with OTB Video's Cumparty 9.
"We wanted to wait until everyone was done with the holidays and the show before we started shipping this so everyone would be able to get it at the same time," Ragan said. "The holidays were a time to reflect on the past year for us and make some decisions as to what we really wanted to do over the next year."
