Mike Price plans to join several thousand conventioneers at the January adult Internet show in Las Vegas. Price looks forward to the event - formerly ia2000, now Internext - as a valuable chance to network, exchange ideas, and get updates on the adult entertainment industry.
But the San Diego entrepreneur will be guarded. "If anybody asks me questions or tries to interview me this time, I'm not talking. If I don't recognize them, I'm not talking," Price says. "I'm not going to be helping out these so-called marketing research people anymore."
During last January's show, Price and his business partner, Jean Winslow, a retired elementary schoolteacher in San Diego, made international headlines after inadvertently chatting with what turned out to be a news reporter from the Associated Press. While many owners of X-rated websites would welcome such publicity, Winslow was horrified.
But first, a little back story.
An accomplished pianist and singer, Winslow, 68, has worked as a volunteer in San Diego for the Opera Guild, the Symphony, the Chamber Society, and the Republican Party. Within her circle of neighbors and friends, who are mostly older than she, Winslow organizes outings to concerts and other musical events, and she does the driving. Winslow spends time with her two granddaughters the same way her own grandmother spent time with her years ago - seated at the piano, occupied with lessons, practicing scales.
How the mild-mannered grandmother and model volunteer emerged from obscurity is the result of naivet� and chance. "It's a story of how to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," says Price, a former lawyer. On hearing those words, Winslow rolls her eyes and shakes her head in agreement. It's also a lesson in how aliases and stage names play an important role in protecting one's identity in an occupation that raises eyebrows.
Last January, Angie Wagner, a news reporter for the Associated Press, thought Price and Winslow looked a bit out of place amid exhibits touting X-rated photographs, videos, and websites. For starters, the two were fully clothed in business suits, in contrast to the 5,000 outlandishly dressed (some, partially dressed) participants. "I thought they might be curious about the show," Wagner says. With her conservative attire, glasses, and beauty-parlor bouffant hair, Winslow "definitely stuck out. She looked like a sweet, older lady," Wagner recalls. "When she said her family and friends didn't know, I thought, uh-oh, they might know by tomorrow."
Sure enough, Wagner's short but pithy news story about a 68-year-old retired schoolteacher in the Internet sex business was transmitted around the world. It was published by The Province newspaper in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Winslow's daughter lives. Her daughter read the article, entitled "Online Sex Deals Made in Las Vegas," and immediately called her mother in San Diego. Suddenly, Winslow had a lot of explaining to do. So her two other children wouldn't be caught unaware, Winslow called to alert them that she was newsworthy and, more importantly, to explain why. "My son chuckled at first, but then he wanted to know more about it."
Winslow reluctantly admits she became involved in the adult Internet via a passive investment in 1999 as a way to supplement her retirement income. She describes herself as "a silent partner" in Price's adult website, meaning she invested money in the business but does not operate or manage it. She wouldn't specify how much she invested other than to say "just a little bit." Winslow and Price, 54, each say the site, SexyReds.com, was really Price's pet project. Although he sold X-rated videos via the site, Price says, he mainly used it to study Internet traffic patterns. "I'm much more interested in search-engine placement ranking," Price says, referring to the strategy of luring more viewers to a website and parlaying that popularity into revenue.
In July, Price sold SexyReds.com and launched four new adult entertainment websites. Sex4lessvideos.com (www.sex4lessvideos.com) sells X-rated videos of blondes, Asians, redheads, blacks, and Latinas; titles include Cr�me de la Face and Let's Get Kinky. RipAssVideo.com (www.ripassvideo.com), what Price calls an "anal worship site," sells videos focusing on anal sex. Price uses FleshVideo.com (www.fleshvideo.com) to generate revenue from traffic. Anime-into.com (www.anime-into.com) sells Japanese DVDs and VCDs.
Winslow and Price say the retired schoolteacher has no involvement in the new websites, not even a passive investment. Besides music, Winslow enjoys gardening, reading, genealogical research, and learning about computers. She often attends classes about software programs and computer use offered for free by San Diego Community College. Unlike Price, Winslow has not taken the Learning Annex's $59 course on How to Make Money in the Adult Entertainment Business on the Internet, which is taught in San Diego and San Francisco. "I'm on the Internet all the time," Winslow says, stressing she does not peruse adult websites. In fact, Winslow says, the only adult websites she has ever seen are Price's.
Apparently Winslow didn't spend much time or attention looking at her former investment, SexyReds.com. Otherwise, her 19 years of correcting papers at three elementary schools in San Diego might have prompted her to notice that "blonds" was misspelled. Price says he sold SexyReds.com because he was unhappy with its design.
Describing himself as a "broken-down trial lawyer," Price says he wants to capitalize on the burgeoning online-adult-entertainment business. Catherine Miller, vice president of SunUp Media Group Inc., in Temecula, Calif., which owns, designs, and hosts adult websites, says the industry is attracting people of all ages and from all walks of life. But "the vast majority of people getting involved in this business are professionals looking to make money. That ranges from accountants to doctors to lawyers. I've had one client who works for a title company."
The traditional purveyors of adult entertainment, such as strip joints and topless clubs, have been slow to milk the Internet as an income source, Miller says. Computer experts in their 20s led the way, she says, and now everyone else is catching up. Hearing about former lawyers and schoolteachers starting adult websites is not at all surprising, Miller says. "Just the other day I spoke to a retiree in Florida who's in the business."
Michael Twombly, co-owner of Zipwell Online "Anything Internet" LLC in San Diego, says X-rated subject matter represents about 15 percent of his business. Twombly says many of his customers for adult sites are lawyers, real estate agents, and certified public accountants. "I don't get smut kings. Almost everyone who has come to us has made money in other ways, and they're looking at this as an investment," he says. "One guy made a bunch of money selling palm trees, and he wants to reinvest it in a porno site."
Price says he spent most of his legal career in Houston, working from 1974 to 1984 as the general counsel for K-Mart/ Clarke Development Real Estate. In that position, Price says he helped build K-Mart stores throughout the country, including ones in Chicago, San Diego, and Great Falls, Mont. He also developed computer software that lawyers can use for recording their hours and billing clients. Disillusionment with the legal profession and a marriage gone awry prompted him to quit and return to San Diego, Price says. He grew up in Fallbrook, Calif. Price received a bachelor of science degree in 1969 and a law degree in 1974, both from the University of Houston.
To hear them talk about the adult-Internet industry and the unwanted exposure from the Associated Press - and Price does most of the talking - Price and Winslow come across as babes in the virtual woods or virtual babes in the woods.
Video sales at SexyReds.com were disappointing, Price acknowledges, noting the site lacked any of the banners, promotions, and joint ventures that would bring in advertising revenue. Few websites can make significant money selling products, confirms Miller. However, his new websites are already profitable, Price says, and he is more enthusiastic. "I don't really care what you say about me, just spell my website right."
Ironically, Price missed a golden opportunity to promote SexyReds.com during his interview with the Associated Press. Price says he thought Wagner was conducting a marketing survey for the Associated Press. Winslow says she had no idea that Wagner was writing a news story that would be accessible to newspapers nationwide and internationally. She says she was incensed to learn about the article from her daughter. "When I get mad, I say things very calmly," Winslow says. She acknowledges she was not really tuned into Wagner or what the reporter was doing. Consequently, Winslow says, she let Price do most of the talking.
"I didn't say I was doing a marketing survey. I said, ?I'm with the Associated Press and I'm doing a story on the show.' They definitely knew they were talking to a reporter. They probably didn't realize what would happen," Wagner says. "I probably talked to them for maybe ten minutes. She was really reserved. He definitely did most of the talking."
Price, who still contends he was responding to a market study, recalls he made statements to shock Wagner. "I started pulling her leg a little bit. I said things like ?Sex sells.' I told her a lot of stuff. Half of it was true. Half of it wasn't." The part that was true are Price's and Winslow's names, spelled correctly; their ages; their former occupations; and their place of residence: San Diego.
One of Price's video suppliers, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity, says most people with ties to adult entertainment dread exposure. The supplier, who owns a video shop in San Diego, says he fears ostracism by neighbors and friends if they were to learn his inventory includes X-rated videos or that he supplies an X-rated website. "They might think I'm a pervert. It would ruin my life." But, he says, the economic reality is, he can make substantially more money from selling and renting adult videos than from mainstream movies. "Jean doesn't sound happy about this story."
Price stresses that Winslow's involvement in the adult Internet was peripheral. Winslow says she is now supplementing her retirement income the way she has in the past: via the computer trading of stocks, mostly technology stocks. She has lost sleep over the Associated Press story, Winslow says, because she is worried about the reaction of friends. She says she hasn't spoken to anyone about the news report except her children. "It was such a simple encounter. It was such a simple situation, for it to have such far-reaching implications," Winslow says. "I'm from a rather conservative family. I probably could lose friends. I don't know."
Price chimes in suggesting, "Then those friends aren't worth having." Winslow says, "You're probably right."
