Safely nestled in a quiet industrial area in Los Angeles’ Culver City district, in a sequestered building just five miles north of Los Angeles International Airport, the offices of payment processor DHD Media are about as far away from Porn Valley as you can get.
Of course, seeing as how many of its clients are located across the country, it probably doesn’t matter where DHD sets up shop. “I think location, except for our convenience, is almost irrelevant, because we make sure—whether it’s our development guys or our client-services guys or me—that we get in front of our clients and talk to them. It’s not a problem,” DHD President Ron Jenkins says. “We do that whether they’re in New York or Florida or North Carolina or Toronto. We’d rather go to their office to make sure they all have the information they need for us to have a useful conversation. I think we could be in Omaha and it wouldn’t affect us.”
Such flexibility and mobility are part of what make DHD Media one of the industry’s most prominent payment processors. With services that include credit card processing and billing, streaming media and digital rights management, and managed hosting, DHD has managed to hold its own alongside “big boys” such as CCBill and Epoch, luring big-name companies such as Video Secrets, AEBN, Falcon Studios, Penthouse, Badpuppy, Homegrown Video, GameLink, and Metro to its ever-expanding roster of clients. “Most of our growth has been predicated on a client coming aboard, making more money, and using our tools to build their businesses,” Jenkins says. “Then, their friends and partners would hear about their growth and come on board, as well.”
Originally founded in the late ’90s by Internet starlet/entrepreneur Danni Ashe, DHD has come a long way in establishing itself as a business in its own right. In 2003, the company passed into the hands of Jenkins, the former director of sales for major accounts for AboveNet with a long history of professional technology services and a professional relationship with Ashe that began in 1998. Ashe approached Jenkins about taking over ownership of the company. “I was attracted to DHD Media for very strong reasons,” Jenkins says. “It clearly had a set of technologies that were far, far in advance of what anyone else could offer in the way of online payment processing. Also, the prevalence of entrepreneurship in the adult online market ensured a fast and exciting pace. It’s an industry where the companies that are doing the right things for their clients and offering the best services are going to win every time.”
According to Jenkins, the transition was relatively smooth. “It was already working [on the strength] of the technology and processes that had been developed up to that point. From my perspective, it was simply a matter of continuing that development, while at the same time taking the message of what we were doing to the industry.” Along with a solid team that includes Vice President of Development Jason Burns (whose background includes software development at SGI) and Chief Financial Officer Gary Cann (who spent more than a decade in similar roles at several Fortune 500 companies), Jenkins began capitalizing on the “small running start” DHD had from Ashe’s ownership by reaching out to its existing client base. “We already had a market-defining technology and tool suite; what was lacking was a focus on clientele,” Jenkins says. “We made a very deliberate decision to build our company by continuously creating real value for our clients. We grew steadily and carefully, delivering on what we promised to our clients every time and customizing our solutions to completely meet their needs.”
Securing VS Media (home of Video Secrets and its popular adult-themed Flirt4Free video chat site) as a client in 2003 marked the beginning of major growth for DHD, attracting the attention of several of its current clients, who immediately saw the benefits of signing with the company. As Jenkins says, “Because we partnered with our clients, our strategic consultative recommendations helped ensure that they remained ahead of the curve.
“What makes our processing unique is the [results we get for our clients],” Jenkins continues. “It’s clear that the clients we’ve taken on make more money with our processing. It seems like there are a couple elements that lead to this result: First, we apply better, more highly advanced ‘processing’ methodologies. This enables us to take more good transactions and decline more bad ones. Second, we provide better reporting and admin tools to help our clients drive their businesses—tools that are also integrated with other essential services—like [affiliate program tools package] RevEx, email marketing tools that allow clients to set up email marketing lists according to parameters of any piece of data that we have ever had on their clients, and streaming and DRM. Some of those tools were created and offered because, since we were already doing the payment processing, we had the infrastructure to do them really well. Others were simply offered as a matter of convenience.”
Although the company has built its reputation by providing payment-processing services predominantly to adult entertainment companies, Jenkins says being part of the industry has taught him “that we can provide services to any media company of any type, anywhere in the world. I thought I was used to moving quickly from my experiences working with dot-coms during the days of the Internet bubble. [But], in online adult entertainment, you are mostly working with founding entrepreneurs that are running the companies, and it’s all about driving their businesses forward quickly and sustaining this growth long-term. Our clientele has requirements that are at least as demanding as those of any market in the world—and, in most cases, much more demanding.” Which, Jenkins adds, means his job can be somewhat “challenging” on a consistent basis—and that just happens to be the way he likes it. “It’s a great environment to work in as long as you’re prepared to perform every single day. If you can perform to the satisfaction of this client-base, you can perform for anyone.”
Jenkins says he is proud of having moved out of the shadow of DHD’s former owner to establish the company as a standalone business. “It hasn’t really been difficult,” he insists. “It’s pretty much only the old-school guys that know that [Ashe] did start the company. Where it has been a little bit of a challenge is when they don’t know the company was sold. I’ll talk to a company [that has been hesitant to work with us], and they’ll say, ‘Well, we don’t know how we feel about having our services provided by a company that might ultimately be a competitor for us,’ and I’ll say, ‘I wish you had told me about this a year ago.’ It doesn’t come up as a challenge very often, and when it does, it’s very easily dealt with.” Jenkins says while “it was really helpful to have the association [with Ashe] at first because of the quality and the name recognition, now it’s great to be able to make it clear that we’ve moved well on from there.”
The future of the company involves staying on its current track, Jenkins says. “DHD Media will continue to move ahead boldly and rapidly. We’re going to continue developing even further into ease of use and adding additional features to our service. While we provide a number of key services, all of which together by far make a super-valuable package of services, we’re committed to each of them being leaders even as standalone offerings.”
It’s obvious many of DHD’s clients have responded favorably to the company’s services—a fact that Jenkins says speaks to his company’s reputation for customer service and profitability. “These companies are the industry leaders—and we’re the company they’ve chosen to trust with their most critical services,” he says. “That they feel good about having made the choice—and seeing [that choice] rewarded by having their own businesses run better and more profitably—is very rewarding. That they go even further than that and say they feel that we are working together to move our joint project of growing our respective businesses forward is the best.”
