Private Media Group Inc. (Nasdaq: PRVT) announced that it was the subject of a major feature in the October issue of one of Spain's leading publications, Man magazine. Chief Executive Officer of Private Media Group, Berth Milton, is interviewed at length, focusing particularly on the Company's Internet division. Milton is described as "the equivalent of Bill Gates or Richard Branson in the porn industry".
Man magazine journalist Jose Sanchez says: "The Internet is the future ... but for the porn industry it is the present. Just one statistic will suffice: 68% of worldwide electronic commerce is pornographic. Sex has become the leading bench-test for e-commerce. And, in seven years, Berth Milton has turned himself into gold."
Published by Grupo Zeta, one of Spain's largest publishers of periodicals and multimedia products, Man magazine has a circulation in Spain of over 90,000. The magazine has a 79.3% male and 20.7% female readership and 76.6% of this total are in the influential middle to high income social categories.
Responding to questions in the published interview, Milton says of Private's Internet business that "we try to offer the highest quality at the lowest price. In electronic commerce, 25% of complaints occur when the customer isn't satisfied with the purchase and wants his money back. At Private, this represents only 1%." Asked if e-commerce is governed by rules different from traditional trading, Milton says: "Of course. That's why I don't buy shares in companies like amazon.com. Mail order sales are only profitable when you raise the price by at least 400%. If you resell books and music, you'll never reach that mark-up, unless you have author's rights, exclusive discs and reader' clubs.
"Now, the more they sell, the more they lose. We sell what is seen on the screen during the connection time. If we only sold videos by mail, the Internet wouldn't be cost effective."
The article, while including a profile of CEO Milton, echoes the sentiments of a major Forbes magazine feature last June on the worldwide adult entertainment industry which said that "No company is better positioned to take advantage of this new (Internet) world than Private Media Group". That article also commented that Milton "is turning his (adult entertainment) library into an Internet monster" and that Private Media Group's 34-year catalog of adult entertainment is "the MGM archive of hard sex."
