This article originally ran in the July issue of AVN.
Anybody in the business of reporting on triple-X has AdultDVDEmpire.com hardwired in their memory banks as a reference guide on current DVD releases. Less familiar is Adult Empire, the company's 21st-century brand name. That was the logo on the business card carried by Dan Chura, the director of affiliate development at Adult Empire, who talked with AVN at Internext New Orleans.
Chura was there at the show to make contacts—new affiliates as well as new content providers. "I had four or five really good meetings yesterday, and after the speed networking I got three or four good contacts," he said. "If I go to one of those [speed networking sessions] and I get three or four contacts, it's really worth it—people who have content or who are interested in our white labels."
We grabbed Chura between meetings to learn more about the venerable brand and its newest initiatives. Chura began with a historical perspective. "We started off with DVD Empire, which was a general DVD site, and we were one of the first people to sell [adult] DVDs online," Chura said. That first sale was in fact one of the very first adult DVDs released: Vivid's 1996 title, Bobby Sox, directed by Paul Thomas. "Everyone talks about the decline of the DVD industry, but we still sell a lot of DVDs," Chura added.
First and foremost, though, Adult Empire is a technology company, offering VOD sales and memberships in addition to retail sales of hard goods like DVDs and sex toys.
"Our development team is really strong," Chura said with satisfaction. "We've had a lot of the same developers for the last 10 years. I've been there for seven years and I have the second least seniority in the development team. So we have a lot of technical experience. Since the decline of the DVD, that's where we've put most of our resources—in technology. We have a data center now [BareMetalPittsburgh.com]; we stream all of our own movies. It's really an exciting time for us to switch from physical media to digital media."
On the topic of Adult Empire's most recent growth area, Chura said, "Our membership sites are doing great. We had a soft launch in October. We're really excited about that."
The membership option called Adult Empire Unlimited provides consumers with a different way to purchase adult content. "We just wanted to be able to give our consumers a monthly fee, all you can eat," Chura explained. Members have access to more than 25,000 full movies and 125,000 individual scenes for a single fee, and new movies are added seven days a week. In addition members get 10 percent off on DVDs from participating studios, as well as discounts on sex toys and pay-per-minute packages. "That's a little bit different than a membership site that doesn't have a retail side, which is most of them," he pointed out.
"A lot of people don't even know we do a membership site yet," Chura said. "And we have a free Roku channel with membership and that does great. It's really surprising the number of people who have Rokus. ... You're going to see a lot of people coming out with Roku channels."
Another major initiative at Adult Empire is its white label program, powered by AdultEmpireCash.com, the company's affiliate division. Chura explained, "We've done white labels for a long time, but our old white label program was a lot like the ones you see now where anybody could just fill out a form and they have a white label. We no longer operate like that. We vet people ... we look at their websites, look at how they're going to drive traffic, and then we custom-build white labels. They can do any subset of our inventory. ... If someone has a centered niche, then they can sell that niche on their white label. Some of the studios choose to sell everything because they can make more money, but a lot of them keep their brand intact and only sell their brand. We brand all of the white labels based on the studio or the website. And if they change, we change the white label; you're not going to get in this thing where your white label becomes stale.
"The other thing we have going with our white label is we're going to have a responsive VOD theater system launching [in June]. It's a pay-per-minute model or streaming rentals or downloads. It's completely responsive, so anyone can get on your white label on their phone or on their tablet or on their computer and have the same experience. And the third quarter we're going to be adding a membership option to that. So we're really excited about that, to take that next step into the video-on-demand market."
But just as important as the technology is the content that's being offered on Adult Empire's various platforms. And that was another one of Chura's priorities at the show. "We have so much content for our users, so it's easy to keep them," he said. "We have a lot of content already; we're with most of the big players." But Adult Empire is always on the lookout for more. For instance, Chura mentioned he'd just talked to someone the day before who had purchased some Japanese content and were looking to monetize it.
"We're looking for anyone. Performers who have their own content. Directors who are filming their own stuff and trying to break out on their own. We're looking for everything."
Chura agreed that there has been an uptick in performers looking to own their content. "You've made 100 movies, you're not getting any more money from those 100 movies. But if you make 100 movies and you own that content, you can monetize it for years. And so the girls who are in it for the long run and are looking to make a career, those are the ones who are starting to put out content," Chura said.
Finally, Chura confided, "We're looking to start doing our own content in the next quarter. Mainly for our Unlimited site so we can have exclusive content that isn't going to be in another membership site. We're really excited about it. It's one of our big things going on this year."
So far, Adult Empire's been quiet about these plans and is taking time to find the right partners. But the company knows what it's looking for: "Directors who love what they do, and who will put out great content," Chura said. "We have partnerships with the best studios; we want our content to stand up to theirs."
