The recent merger of long time New York fetish fare company Bizarre Video with Los Angeles-based, couples-friendly Jill Kelly Productions (JKP) is proving to be a match made in porno heaven.
“The merger is going amazingly well,” Bizarre honcho/JKP sales manager Keith Gordon summarized. “It took a lot of work for my force to come out there and set up the warehouse, which we have at the new place, 11151 Vanowen, the old Odyssey building. We have about 45,000 sq. ft.”
It’s a big change for Gordon, a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, who ran Bizarre profitably for more than 20 years, establishing good relations with retailers and distributors across the country. JKP chairman/CEO Bob Friedland jokes that he now has to work harder than ever since the company’s moved its offices from West Hollywood to the Valley, but it’s Gordon who’s gone through the real changes.
“It was a little difficult when you have the New York mentality and L.A. mentality coming together,” Gordon admitted, “but we’re really doing it and it’s working very, very well. I have a house in the [Hollywood] hills, and six or seven of my employees from New York came out here as well, so we have a lot of our salespeople.”
Though Gordon is keeping Bizarre’s New York offices open for sales and collections, the bulk of his operation is now Left Coast-based.
“It’s really fun,” echoed Friedland. “They’re all good people, and I hope they feel the same way about the Jill Kelly people. But from a business standpoint, from my perspective, Keith’s arrival filled a real hole, not necessarily with the product line, because we could have bought anybody; it was a matter of, they had some salespeople, shipping people; we were outsourcing our stuff. Now, we’re in our own warehouse, and it’s just really incredible synergy which was created here, which I envisioned when I thought about doing the deal with them.”
But bicoastal mergers of this sort are hardly commonplace, so we asked Gordon how it came about.
“Well, I’ve known Jill for over 10 years, and Jill Kelly Productions grew rapidly, and at first, they were really looking for some to run their sales department,” Gordon recalled. “Jill called me up and said, ‘We’re looking for somebody; do you know anybody?’ And at the time, it just seemed like the right move. It was a job I could do, and it made sense to put the two places under one roof so we could all profit from it. We had a large overhead in New York; they had a large overhead here, but when you put both of us together under one roof, you’re saving a lot of money. Plus, the video stores, the distributors, the chain stores like the fact that they’re dealing with one company instead of two, and we’re really working together. I really see this company getting twice as big as it’s been in a short period of time. I’m very excited about it.”
“It gives us really one more high-level management person who’s run their own company, that knows the ins and outs, knows the people,” Friedland added. “They’ve been in business a lot longer than us. And Keith’s a terrific guy; everybody speaks highly of him, and we all get along real well. The people he brought here are real strong in areas where we were weak, and Keith adds depth in management. That’s the way everything should be.”
For Gordon, the arrangement is a new challenge, and he’s up for it.
“It really helped us a lot getting into doors that we would have never gotten in before,” he noted. “We’ll call a customer up that we never had before, say ‘We have Jill Kelly,’ and they’ll say, ‘Great! She’s got a great line. We see it in AVN every month.’ And then we’ll say, ‘We have the Bizarre line too; why don’t you try some of that as well? You know, we’re the oldest fetish company in the industry, and we’re the best. Just try it, because we really cater the fetish more toward the mainstream audience.” And we’ve found, once they get the product, which they never did before, they reorder.
Though Gordon’s main duties lie in sales, he’s got the urge to add some lines to the current mix.
“I really would like to do a high quality gay line,” he mused. “I think that’s something that could be a good seller out there. I want to do something that’s high quality, and the quality gay product is a good market.”
Gordon and Friedland have also been discussing getting into the hardcore gonzo market, but the big moneymaker will probably be in an area that, surprisingly, JKP has never explored: The cable/satellite market.
“We going to get them into a lot of places where they haven’t been, but should be,” Gordon predicted. “Before, they really didn’t have the sales force, and that’s where my expertise comes in, to help that, and just generate a nice revenue for the company.”
