Kevin Zernickow and Sam Manning, sole owners and respectively President and Vice-President of ten-month old 1 Distribution, traveled a calm and regular road to their current status as exclusive distributors for 17 gay porn lines — and counting.
Connecticut-born, ex-cop Manning, as porn star Sam Dixon, appeared in over 40 movies, starting in 1996 with All Worlds’ All You Can Eat, and directed several, his first being Sex Fly. “After working with just about every known director as actor or production assistant, and after myself directing movies,” he “decided there was room for a new company with directors who themselves had modeling experience and knew how to get the best out of performers. A lot of directors treat you like a machine.”
That idea gave birth in 1998 to his self-funded Boiling Point Productions, whose first and best-selling of about 20 movies was Pleasure Trail. In 2003, Boiling Point added the Bronco line to handle European imports such as Outdoor Adventures and Camp Hardwood.
In between, “to use some good footage I’d made which wasn’t suitable for the Boiling Point genre,” Sam in June 2002 started Tipo Sesso (Italian for “guy sex”) Productions, calling in long-time friend Kevin Zernickow (himself a former porn star), who had acquired business expertise with large internet corporations as well as artistic experience from mainstream fashion modeling, to handle the business end. “I’m technical and administrative. Sam is the creative force,” Kevin avows.
“Not at all happy with our distribution,” in October 2004 they founded 1 Distribution at first just to handle Tipo Sesso pictures. “But since we were contacting all those wholesalers and retail stores anyway…” says Sam, and Kevin adds, “Sam thought of our distributing other companies’ product.”
Dixon went to friends at Torsion (a light-bondage line), whom he knew desired a new distributor, and Torsion became 1 Distribution’s first outside client with their popular Extreme Boyz series. Flava Productions had been self-distributing on the Internet and was glad to bring its interracial CocoBoys and CocoDorm lines to larger notice. From the Czech Republic came AYOR’s twinks and athletic jocks in Team Training and other titles. Britain’s BulldogXXX, notable for high picture-quality and mature muscular guys, “strictly well-hung,” provided among other movies the surprise success Scum.
The recently acquired Eurocreme line produces technically classy, remarkably beautiful, often widescreen, sometimes plotted pictures like the much-nominated royalty romp, BadBoy. Sam and Kevin are especially excited about the upcoming RentBoy.
Brazil’s Carnaval Films have such titles as Rio Sex… and so on through a total of 17 labels covering a fantastic range of styles and content. Newest additions are England’s FreshSX, first release Up’n Cummin, and a “Dirk Yates-type series,” Straight Off the Base, featuring nothing but real Marines.
This wide variety of product is shipped directly from 1 Distribution’s Hollywood office where Kevin, Sam, and a staff of six give every order personal attention. “We recently stopped handling VHS,” jokes Sam, “strictly because of storage space.” Kevin adds seriously, “No, we made that decision based on picture quality and demand.”
The two handle all elements of operations at the office, including package design. Sam explains, “Right now we’re concernedwith making certain all the companies we represent are totally up to date with the new 2257 regulations, right down to having all their new box covers’ Certificate of Compliance the proper twelve-point type-size, which will take away from usable art space.” (The 2257 Certificate of Compliance is that long, detailed statement on the box, usually in the tiniest type readable, which says that all the models in a movie are over 18, and where the records proving it are kept on file.) Kevin adds, “And you’re probably going to see a lot less explicit art on boxes from now on.” Sam sighs, “Our tax dollars at work.”
In the meantime, business-as-usual includes an indefatigable quest for yet more quality lines that are unrepresented or poorly represented marketwise. “We only represent companies exclusively,” both partners affirm, “our customers want brand-new, never-before-offered movies.”
Sam concludes, “We’ve had such success in such a short time because we ourselves had experienced inept and shady distribution practices and saw how the business should be run. So we offer the services that are needed and, because we have good business practices, we’ve grown very quickly. We found good quality companies that needed good wholesale representation. We try to cover all the different genres that are possible. Our goal is to have something from every genre within the gay film industry. We pay our bills on time. We pay our producers on time. We promote properly. We offer to our customers the service that is needed in the industry.”
Contact info: 877-284-2919; 1Distribution.net.
Photo courtesy of 1Distribution.net.
