Mark Fisher, VSDA's vice president of membership & strategic initiatives, hosted a seminar focusing on “Retailing Trends & Innovations" on Saturday afternoon at the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo.
The panelists included Tim Hogan of DVD Station — a mainstream video retail chain, Vanessa Keegan, managing straight editor for TLA Video, Nolan Williams of Adam & Eve’s retail store and Chris Yewdall of DDD USA, Inc.— a firm that specializes in 3-D and other content technologies.
The emergence of high-definition as a display format was discussed thoroughly with Digital Playground/Adam & Eve’s Pirates mentioned as an excellent example of the format. The consensus of the panel was that consumers conversions to high-definition televisions and DVDs players is certainly not going to happen overnight but that responding to the demand for the product is a must for any adult retailer.
Yewdall discussed the non-glasses-required future of 3-D adult product and when the discussion moved to an overall trend forecast, things got lively.
Williams cited the untapped female consumer as the largest opportunity for growth that adult retailers have at their beck and call saying simply, “Stores that don’t market to attract the female customer will not make it.”
Keegan de-emphasized the immediate impact of new technologies on the consumer.
“Customers aren’t interested in any of this new stuff until they can push a button on their TV's to make it happen,” she said, while also citing the alt-porn movement as an important content trend and hailing the increased consumption of porn by the twenty-something market.
The death of VHS was touched on briefly along with the resulting dip in rentals which led into Hogan offering that the future will involve retailers having to be ready to facilitate more formats as more movie-viewing options become available.
Yewdall wisely summed things up is his closing comment saying, “It’s clearly an evolving consumer we are dealing with here and it’s ultimately important that everyone is ready to serve him.”
