SOUTH DENNIS, Mass. – Bob’s Videos, an independent, East Coast niche studio, has fulfilled consumer fantasies for over a decade with leg and foot fetish videos, as well as smoking, solo tease, and lesbian titles.
Owner Bob Alexander has 260 titles in his catalogue, dating from the company’s creation in 1994, but only about 40% of those have been transferred to DVD. Many of his customers want to collect his older titles in the digital format, so he is picking and choosing the likeliest items for reissue.
Bob's “summer project,” he told AVN, has been repackaging on DVD one of his most collectible lines, House of Legs, two 60-minute volumes per disc.
The DVD of Vols. 1 (with Brittany Andrews) and 2 (with Rebecca Lord) is now available. Vols. 3 (“Pantyhosed”) and 4 (“Toehold”) have just been released, with Vols. 5 and 6 coming soon. After that there’s 21 more volumes to go, hopefully at two-week intervals.
Additionally, Alexander is releasing two new titles, Vols. 13 and 14 of his Private Editions: Ultimate Nylon series of “nylon leg art.” They’re scheduled to street within the next few weeks.
Alexander is very much a one-man band. Scripting, filming, editing, blurb-writing, promotion, everything but the artwork comes from the “lean mean machine” of Bob himself. He shoots everything in Los Angeles, heading west two or three times a year to stay current with the new young talent.
Typical of many small niche producers, Alexander was initially a fan who couldn’t find the kinds of movies he craved on the existing market. So 13 years ago he decided to jump into the marketplace himself.
“There was a huge void in many of the softer fetishes,” he recalls. “In fact, bondage was practically the only fetish people thought of when they used the term back then. 99% of adult film ignored or minimized nylon/ leg/ foot fetish and no one considered smoking a fetish.”
He decided right away not to try to emulate the mainstream with boy-girl sex “but to concentrate on fetish and foreplay/tease,” specifically in areas of his own interest such as nylons and smoking.
“Everybody told me back in the beginning that ‘softcore’ couldn't make it. Female masturbation was ‘boring,’ and there was just no market for nylon art or smoking—which was stupid in the face of all the anti-smoke campaigns.”
At first, he said, his approach was slow to catch on, but it “steadily grew into a solid base of customers and solid demand as a niche product.”
The proliferation of Internet porn led a crowd of imitators to “jump on the nylon/leg/foot bandwagon—despite the fact that most thought it was an easy way to make a bundle and really didn't ‘get it.’”
The key to fetish filmmaking success, he maintains, is for the producer either to have the fetish himself or to “deeply understand the fetish in order to film it so it isn't stupid.”
Over the years Alexander has kept his specialized niches going in the face of increased competition.
“The only way I've avoided also getting steamrollered by the big companies is by good old-fashioned customer service and contact. I take the time to write back to customers, settle problems quickly—and I have not changed any prices for any of my films in 13 years, except to offer better discounts.”
Casting “as wide a net as possible,” Alexander has deals with four companies to distribute his various lines. Bon Vue distributes Private Editions, Major Distribution handles Bob’s Line and House of Legs, and Pacific Media Entertainment a combination of titles.
Avalon Enterprises is in charge of The Platinum Edition, featuring girl-girl action and billed as “his absolute finest work.” His “Special Smoker Series” is sold exclusively on his website, www.bobsvideos.com.
All sales queries can be directed to Alexander through the website or by phone at 508.385.8555.
