Amid clear skies and a large turnout the second day of the East Coast Video Show, Frank Kay of IVD wanted to talk about several issues, not the least of which was an article posted in Video Store Magazine, the East Coast Show edition, titled: "Adult Supplier Presence Down at Show."
Kay took exception to some comments made by author Doug Desjardins, including an inaccurate statement that Vivid Video was going to have "one of the largest exhibits on the adult show floor". Vivid, which did not have a booth, confined its presence to space under the GVA umbrella. Desjardin's article also states: "after a two-year boom in business, adult video appears to be feeling the effects of the independent retailer shakeout." Kay ain't so sure about that.
Kay: "I read that article. I was kind of miffed. It sounded like the guy [author Doug Desjardins] wasn't even at the show. Obviously he would know that there was no [Vivid] booth there. We feel that the business is doing great. We feel that our customers are loving our service. We think that our customers' business has not dropped. I am in the forefront of that in the distribution end. Our business is way up. The attendance might be down as it states in the article [the article says down by 11 exhibitors]. That might be the truth, I'm not sure, but that by no means says the adult video business is drooping in any way or going down.
"My feeling is the adult business traffic here is pretty substantial, whether it be consumers, stores or distributors. There's a nice amount of traffic coming in here. Tuesday, a lot of flights were delayed out of Philadelphia and Newark. Wednesday it was jamming and booming. We're doing a lot of business. We have 24 stars here [signing at the IVD booth alone] all day, including our big names, Jenna Jameson, Sunset Thomas, our new exclusive signess. We had Vanessa Del Rio here Tuesday. We have Ginger Lynn here. We've got, I would guess, the hottest selection of girls in the industry right now out our booth signing all at once.
"As far as that article, unfortunately, I think someone didn't really look at what the show is all about before they wrote the article."
Articles aside, Kay said he was very excited about the Sunset Thomas signing. "From what I saw Tuesday and Wednesday, this is really going to help the Pleasure Productions library line. We had her previously for three videos about three or four years ago. Right now it's amazing the reaction we're getting out of her. She's a pleasure to work with. She's friendly, polite, great with the customers, has a nice business sense to her, and hopefully in the two year contract we can do a lot of show signings in addition to bookstore signings. She'll be traveling around the United States when we get three or four movies behind us.
"We also have Helen Duval here at the Show. Helen Duval is an exclusive for Pleasure Productions. We're putting out between six and eight videos this year with Helen Duval. She's very popular in Germany. She's like God in Germany. She's very well known, well respected. She's also exactly what we want. She's very personable, good at signings and has a business sense. Also in the lineup we have two other new girls coming through Pleasure Productions, one might be exclusive. We're not sure.
"Her name is Tyler. She has done one video for New Vision, non-adult. Her newest [adult] video was shot in Philadelphia with Ed Powers ["Ed Powers Takes Philadelphia: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Breast"]. We shot that about four weeks ago. It was phenomenal. We went around Philly with Ed. Ed just caused so much traffic. We toured around the Liberty Bell and shot a scene in the area. We shot a little scene in a limo. We shot down near Second Street. It was a fun day. Tyler had a blast. There's three newcomers in this feature.
"Ed and I have been friends for 15 years. I always said I wanted to do something with him. Ironically he was coming in town to sign at a video store, and, in between that, we ended up shooting some scenes. He was great. He loved our crew. We had a great crew, and it's a great little movie. We'll release it around November.
"The other girl we're looking at, did her first scene last week. Hopefully we're going to make that announcement in the next month if things go together. Pleasure Productions could be in that multi-contract arena soon. It's not something we do often. The girls will be contracted for between four and eight movies a year. They're girls that are good at store signings and can help us out at shows.
"We've got a lot of stuff happening. We're looking to acquire a few more lines. We definitely own Western Visuals. That's approximately 1200 titles. We'll be putting them out closer to the first of the year. That deal has been cemented probably 8 to 10 months, after Western Visuals had their fire. We actually were in negotiations before the fire. We own all those titles outright, for the world, till perpetuity. We'll probably come out with 50 to 100 titles at a clip.
"In addition to that is Las Vegas Video. I bought the library of approximately 280 masters - that's cable and VHS. That's also going to come up after we get all the records brought up to date and the boxes reprinted. That will probably come out the first of the year.
"We've also got at least one or two acquisitions planned that by November or December I'll have signed, sealed and delivered. Our philosophy has been to acquire, and I think we'll continue doing that. It's worked for us and there's no reason to stop it. We're in a serious change of times right now with commerce. We feel there's opportunities out there, and we're going to continue to consolidate just like the banks and the telephone companies.
"As far as some of the other things we're doing at the ECVS, East Coast News is our novelties division. It's doing outstanding. We feel we are the tops in the industry at this point. What we're doing here at the show, we're giving away some free lubricants, some condoms, lot of other giveaways, key chains - things that pretty much pertain to East Coast News. East Coast News is run out of New Jersey and Florida, two locations - a 30,000 sq. foot warehouse in Hollywood, Florida and our 65,000 sq. foot warehouse in New Jersey. Having two locations has really helped East Coast News handle the south part of the eastern United States. That has been a big area that I've been trying to lockup. We've really made progress.
"Going back to this article, if anyone needs to talk about stores, or bookstores or video stores, I'd be a good judge of whether business has been strong or not. We feel it's still strong and that we're going to have a very strong end of the year and into the beginning of the new year. We feel that DVDs are going to drive that as well as a lot of great productions that are coming out, and some of the top vendors are still coming out with some strong stuff. I still think business is strong."
