SOUTH PARIS, Maine—All Boys Distribution has resumed normal operations less than one week after the company’s Maine headquarters was damaged by a tornado that wrought havoc across southwestern Maine in the wake of Hurricane Bill.
“Damages were minimal compared to what they could have been if I would have been 25 yards in any direction from where I am now,” All Boys President Rob Ragan said. “We have had some downright good luck here lately, and frankly, I couldn’t even imagine what we would have done if one of the tornadoes had struck the house or office building. Thankfully, I don’t have to deal with that type of decision.”
Now that the crisis is past, All Boys Vice President Craig Rivas said he has begun to see “signs of life” in the adult DVD wholesale market.
“Things are definitely starting to get back to normal sales-wise here; thus, we’re now looking to add about five new studios to the label before year’s end,” Rivas revealed. “It’s been weird, but we [experienced] almost double in gross sales [during August] what we did during May, June and the first three weeks in July. All of a sudden, it was like a dam broke, and we were flooded with orders. We don’t have enough new titles in the can to fill them; hence, we need to start adding studios again.”
Ragan said the distributor stopped adding studios earlier this year because the economic downturn seemed to make impossible any attempt to force more product into a saturated market.
“We wanted, of course, to wait and make sure [August’s sales turnaround] wasn’t a fluke, but sales have been very good and steady over the last month,” he said. “Now with the upcoming fall and Expo-Mark, it makes sense to pick up where we stopped in January and add in a few studios to complement the ones we kept.”
According to Ragan and Rivas, All Boys will review all product in search of a distributor. The staff may be contacted via the company’s website, AllBoysDist.com, or by calling (877) 5-ALLBOY. Ragan also may be contacted by email.
