In a business where most companies shouldn’t be buying green bananas, Pleasure Productions has been thriving for two decades.
Run by founder Frank Kay and his brother Michael — “he's been my partner, and we've worked hand in hand together. There's never been a fight,” said Frank — the massive, 200-employee, central New Jersey-based adult concern began with the purchase of one little triple X title. As fellow Garden Stater Bruce Springsteen says, “From small things, mama, big things one day come.”
“What happened about 20 years ago, because I own IVD [International Video Distributors, a company that is actually one year older than Pleasure], I started distributing my own product, and I started out with this title called Getting Ahead,” offered Kay, who graduated from Westchester University in Pennsylvania with a degree in business administration. “It had a girl named Angel Cash. We sold thousands and thousands of pieces of VHS. We bought two other movies, Video Store Vixens, and Slippery When Wet. Those two movies sold thousands of pieces. At that time, product was selling for 20 bucks.”
Roughly a year after launching, the company began creating its own product on the west coast, north of Los Angeles (where it was illegal at the time to shoot, said Kay) in lovely Marin County where he would fly in for a weekends’ shooting.
“We shot approx 10 movies out there,” said Kay. “At that point, there weren't too many productions going on there.” The company also established a California branch at that time. “We had our warehouses out there, where we basically ran a warehouse for duplication and production. More shipping was done there, but we always kept our offices here in New Jersey.”
Pleasure’s business model has long been based on acquisition. Kay has been buying smaller companies and titles for longer than a lot of the current batch of porn talent has been alive. Back then, of course, the industry was a lot smaller.
“When we started, VCA was around, Caballero and Vivid was around, there was about 10 companies out there,” he recalled. “At that point, we actually bought a company called CinemaTrix. It was 10 titles with Bunny Bleu and a bunch of other stars. That worked out real good for us.”
The company offered big-selling titles like the lesbian-themed Girls Will Be Boys, King Kong Meets Anal Woman, and Black Man Meets Anal Woman. With the interracial and girl/girl material doing well, Kaye continued to expand his empire.
“We bought a lot of companies,” said Kay. “Outlaw Productions, Al Borda Video, Plum Productions, Western Visuals, Rosebud Productions, Matt Zane Productions, Bedtime Productions, Armageddon, Nob Rider, Simon Wolf. These were all production companies, and our big thing was content. They had a variety of content, though most of them were boy-girl. There was some bondage in there.”
Sensing a ground floor opportunity, Pleasure stepped into the gay market. And we’re not talking about Pavillions.
“We bought a few gay companies,” he said. “In Hand Video, Bob Jones Productions, and then we started producing gay video, and we came out with our own company, Pleasure Productions Gay. We had probably one of the first black and Latino gay lines on the market, and we're probably going back 14 years ago at this point. That stuff just wasn't around back then.”
So, how was it that so many smaller companies couldn’t survive, companies that ended up under the Pleasure umbrella?
“They just couldn't stay in business. They were selling too cheap, or they were spending too much money or whatever,” Kay said. “But it was there for the taking, and I ended up acquiring all this content. At this point, the Pleasure Productions family owns well over 6,000 titles. Probably more like 7,000.”
Within that enormous number of videos exist virtually any type of porn you can think of. Pleasure provides something for everybody.
“One of our claims to fame is that we've gotten into all the genres of product,” Kay offered, “and all of it sells. At this moment, I have big boobs, I have gay, I have straight, I have lesbian, I have bondage, amateur, interactive, and old age erotica. We were one of the first guys to get into to the bi sex and she-male markets, after we took over LA Video's titles.
“We got ourselves into the parodies,” he continues. “We bought a company that was called Hip Video, and that was a bunch of parodies, and we kept doing parodies: Lethal Passion, Boneheads, Snatch Adams. And we have a variety of features that have been put on cable with Playboy and New Frontier. We've done some great deals with these cable markets and video on demand markets.”
Over the course of two decades, Pleasure has had to contend with an ever-changing, ever-expanding industry.
“There's just an astronomical amount of product coming out in the business now,” he said. “It makes it very competitive. The business has changed obviously. I think in the last five years, there's been a tremendous amount of new players coming in with the camcorder. Obviously the Internet is a big booster of the whole business. It's gotten the whole world into our business. Without the Internet, you've got 100 competitors. With the Internet, you have millions of competitors.”
Still, Pleasure has had no problem staying afloat and remaining competitive; when a company can boast so many categories and sub-categories, it’s easy to see why.
“Our motto is ‘come out with a variety, and it works,’” Kay said. “Not just a variety of genres, but a variety of actual company names, or trademarks. All our names are trademarked and copy written. We came out with a bunch of logos and a bunch of trademarks, so that stores would buy all different product, and it wouldn't be coming from just one production company.”
Kay noted that his business has featured some of the hottest stars in the sex galaxy.
“We've had stars like Jill Kelly and Sylvia Saint,” he said. “Most recently, I've probably had the nicest three blondes out there — Nikki Benz, Krystal Steal, and Gina Lynn. Also, Trinity was in there for a while. In the past we've had Chasey Lane, Sunset Thomas, Rebecca Lord, Nikki Anderson, Asia Carrera, Sydnee Steele.”
Yet the stars would be nothing without directors, and Kay’s hired some of the best.
“We’ve used Jay Shanahan, Duck Dumont, Stuart Canterbury, Frank Thring, Nic Cramer,” Kay said. “Cramer won Best Director – Film in 1999 for Looker,” said Kaye. "Looker was the film of the year in 1999. Now we have guys like Cory and Dale Jordan, and Eddie James. Paul Barresi has done a lot of our gay video, Andre Madness has shot a lot of videos for us, so has Pat Myne, Basically Jules Jordan started with me as a sales person for IVD. He started shooting the Rosebud line for us. We probably have 15-20 Jules Jordan movies.
“Skeeter Kerkove is now doing a lot of our videos and continuing a few of our hottest series, like Heavy Metal and Black and White Assphalt.” And the company just keeps on coming; Pleasure is now stepping into the POV market with an upcoming line featuring teenaged girls.”
The big question: Will Pleasure be around 20 years from now?
“I don’t know,” stated Kay. “I'm trying to bring some young whippersnappers up behind me, but we'll see. I plan on being here for a while. I really think we have a great organization. We have great people around me. As long as I surround myself with great people, I can continue the company and continue the success.
“Hopefully we’ll continue the acquisition process, which is never-ending. And you never know when a new format 's going to come out. Just like VHS took over Beta, DVD took over VHS, we're not sure what the next format might be. But whether it's digital or a real piece of product, I’ll have the content to provide.”
For more information go to www.pleasureproductions.com or www.pleasurevip.com
