"We've been building this library, shooting for magazines for years, and reselling and relicensing the rights," says Gail Harris, head of Falcon Foto. "All of a sudden, we have the copyrights to this huge library and now it's open to 50,000 Webmasters who might want to license material." She's speaking of one of the world's largest collections of XXX photography, which has received sudden and unexpected publicity, and she's aiming to bring it all online - and to an initial public offering.
And Harris is the first to tell you she's surprised at the potential value of this photo inventory. "A few years ago," she says, "I asked a guy at Penthouse how much this was all worth. And he said about $25 million. We'd had it for about ten to twelve years."
The actual value, though, may take a few months to confirm. Harris and Falcon are now working on the basic stages of an IPO and having the library evaluated by experts, a process she says could take at least six months and perhaps a little longer. But interest in the library has swollen, since Forrester Research asked her about it, she says, and since the Dallas Morning News ran a feature story about it before Christmas.
Falcon's inventory has built over long years providing pinup photography to the like of Penthouse, High Society, and other front-line adult magazines. Though Harris wants to bring the studio's expertise online, she knows it won't be as easy as it looks.
"Right now, we make a nice little living in print," she says, "but we don't have the money to invest in the Internet in a big way like we hope to do. We don't have the backing behind it. We have the content, but we don't have the money behind it to promote it yet. We're opening a Web site (www.falconfoto.net) and licensing to other Webmasters, and we're putting all the money we get in print to getting it out on the Net."
Harris says it's costing Falcon "a couple of hundred dollars an image" to make the collection digital and resize it properly for online publication. "We've gotten through 150,000-200,000 images so far." And counting, she says.
Harris also says Falcon is mulling a couple of buyout offers, but mostly concentrating on the IPO for now. Not to mention producing "a couple of group membership niche sites." She says it didn't take long in the print world to understand most readers - and, by extension, Net surfers - are into "specific fantasies," and she says the niche market is going to be the strongest coming wave of online adult entertainment.
