A six-page article in Business 2.0 profiles Steve Hirsch's rise to the top of the adult entertainment industry as founder of Vivid Entertainment, calling him "the executive most responsible for transforming a disreputable underground industry into a mainstream, multibillion-dollar business."
The article, by Business 2.0 senior writer Paul Keegan, tells how Hirsch and a partner started Vivid with a $20,000 stake 19 years ago, launching a company that now brings in close to $100 million a year.
Keegan goes into Hirsch's background, including how his father worked for Rueben Sturman as a salesman before starting Adult Video Corp.
Steve Hirsch left his father's business to branch out with his own company intending to make adult videos for couples, a market Hirsch felt his father was overlooking.
Hirsch is credited with conceiving the concept of contract-performers, the first of which was Ginger Lynn in 1984.
The coup of Hirsch's career was the 1999 purchase of a cable channel from Playboy by assuming a $25 million dollar debt. Unlike Playboy, he understood America's appetite for hardcore sex, which allowed Hirsch to surpass Playboy on the cable market within two years. According to Business 2.0 in 2001, Playboy realized their error, and bought back the channel they sold him, plus the two others he had launched in that time for $92 million.
The magazine notes that extra cash from that deal allowed Hirsch to expand further, launching a marketing blitz of products endorsed by his contract-performers, such as Vivid Condoms, Vivid novelties and Vivid snowboards.
Keegan predicts that soon Hirsch and LFP, Inc owner Larry Flynt may be duking it out to see who can control the largest share of the adult market. The article predicts that Flynt will be banking on the more traditional route, acquiring more production companies like VCA, while Hirsch thinks that the technology market will take over with the future defined by the Internet, PDAs and hotel porn.
The business magazine, owned by AOL Time-Warner, also visited the set of the Jenna Jameson vehicle The It Girl
Also of interest is a sidebar breakdown of the cost of making Brianna Loves Jenna. Talent was the bulk of production costs, coming in $112,000 of the total $283,000 spent on the video. Business 2.0 was vague regarding the profit margin, leaving it at over $1 million.
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