Getting a clear picture of what’s going on in the adult business depends on whom you ask and who’s doing the asking.
Adult business owners tell me one thing, but then I go on the Internet to find that we all seem to be sharing in an erotic economy that’s generating anywhere from $4 B to $97 B annually. Again, that’s depending on what mainstream writer is buying the malarkey, regurgitating it and adding a fallacy or two of his own like porn being bigger than Major League Baseball, NFL Football and the NBA put together. It’s befuddling especially when you know all of these figures are a crock to begin with.
This week the Canadian Business.com website ran near to an honest piece about the state of the porn business, titled “Sex Isn’t Selling” and quoted XBiz publisher Alec Helmy, thusly: “It’s very well possible that domestic [porn] revenue has dropped below $1 billion.”
That one I’ll buy as long as I can trim a few more numbers from Helmy’s guess.
This week, a bunch of porn businessmen ran off to Maui to attend ExpoMark, each shelling out $12,000 for the privilege of wearing Tommy Bahama shirts without being stared at like you’re some old geek plus allowing you access to buyers you probably can get on the phone. Think: an audience with the Pope with him wearing loafers and no socks.
Then, again, this show operates on the simple principle that those same buyers are more likely ducking your calls to begin with and have no choice but to meet you face to face on neutral grounds. That’s because the buyers are flown in gratis [obviously paid for out of that $12Gs assessed the owners]; and from what I gather there’s additional gratis.
Today I had a chat with one of the porn company owners who I’ll call Mr. XXX. He didn’t attend ExpoMark. His reasons were 12,000 simple ones which he’d rather put to other use- like paying his bills, putting product on the market and, at the end of the day, getting paid. Getting paid is the tricky part, but chasing after your money in the porn business is the new exercise fad.
“DVD prices are dropping down and down,” Mr. XXX tells me as if this is news.
“Then you have people trying to convince you to shoot in 3D, 4D and 6D and spending tons and tons of money to produce them. I go are you for real? What for? Every day you’ve got someone new with a bright idea on how to revolutionize the business. But, honestly? There’s nothing fresh in this business any more.”
[Porn parodies don’t count because this is the second go-around for them. And 3D? They’ve been talking about 3D porn since at least 1991 and samples of that stuff then were not much different than samples of that stuff now.]
Mr. XXX and I agree on another point- celebrity sex tapes. Are they making the money being claimed? He doubts it. I doubt it, even though the subject is certainly worth a lot of publicity to any company bribing Octo-mom to drop her burka.
Next I ask Mr. XXX about this latest ExpoMark since he was the one who brought it up.
“I heard that was a failure,” he shrugs, noting that he attended one of the shows awhile back and saw enough.
“They brought in all these guys that weren’t paying me to begin with. This year they went to Hawaii, and the same guys that haven’t been paying me all along were going to be there. Why would I give them another $10,000 order? I’m never going to see the money.”
“The way it works is you’re in your suite, and a new buyer comes in every ten minutes or so to sit with you. I asked one guy if I give you a $6,000 order, when am I going to see my money? He started telling me how times are tough. Then why am I paying them to be there? Then you hear from another guy how they did good business with the same guy who just gave me the times are tough story. Bullshit. We’re all dealing with the same customers. They’re not doing any fucking new business. People aren’t interested in opening up any new accounts. I don’t get it.”
[Besides, it’s a pretty well known, but not often discussed fact in the industry that certain buyers have their pet companies and accounts to deal with and work hard at not upsetting the apple cart.]
Mr. XXX claims he was in contact with several owners who went to this year’s ExpoMark, and they told him pretty much what he had already guessed, that they weren’t doing any business.
“I guess it’s peer pressure and the need to be seen,” I suggest to Mr. XXX.
“Otherwise, people draw a conclusion that you’re out of business. That’s why everybody goes to these trade shows.”
Mr. XXX estimates that the business has been in decline by about 25-30%.
[The European market is supposedly down by at least 50%.]
At one time another figure was going out that 25,000 stores in the US were handling adult product.
“Right now I don’t think there’s more than 4,000 of them in the whole country,” Mr. XXX states, of the opinion that most stores are picking up the Sunshine and Caballero product for between 30 and 40 cents.
“They’re not picking up new releases,” he adds. “And if they are, they’re picking them up on contingency. If they sell they sell; if they don’t, they give them back to you.
“The whole business works on contingency. People are saying they’re moving 2,000 pieces of a new release. That’s not true. Because there are no more automatics or anything like that. So if you don’t make your movie in a very cost effective price you can’t survive. You’ll be out of business. Don’t tell me how much merchandise you put out there. Tell me how much you got paid. Nobody talks about returns.
“And who needs contract girls? They don’t sell any more DVDs. Nobody cares except about the price.”