Carrie
11-23-2005, 04:39 AM
Listen up folks, I've got some interesting on-the-street information for you.
I am (gasp) working now in a video store that has a "front" section and a three-times-as-large "back" section. The back, of course, is all porn. We do one hell of a hefty business in there. Three times (at least) as much as the front "mainstream movies" part.
I walk around the store and see DVDs of Homegrown girls, the BangBus guys, even Anjalie (Meat and Aga's Indian girl site)... all kinds of stuff. I keep expecting to move something one day and find some video of Sabby or Claudia. I am still being surprised each night I work and am straightening up the shelves... I know her... I know her... I know the guy that owns that company... oh my god X does Brick & Mortar DVDs too?... etc etc etc
Anyhow, you wouldn't believe what the customers think of porn people - both the content girls/guys and the folks who own/run the company. They don't see it as a business at ALL... they honestly think that those content folks go around screwing everything they see and are total nymphos. They think the guys running the businesses are all extreme playboys who do nothing more than fuck models on casting couches all day long and that most of the business owners/producers look like Ron Jeremy (current state, not 20 yrs ago) and live like gods with money falling out of their hairy, pimply asses.
They completely do NOT get the concept that a content girl will only do solo and girl-girl shoots because she wants to keep her "untouchable" appeal to her male fans... every one I've talked to thinks a girl who does that is simply a lesbian. No other reason. She's just a lesbian. Hello?!?
The majority of the customers DO own computers and HAVE gone online but PREFER the brick and mortar store and videos because they get far more time "with the girls" for a tenth of the price. (At our store, one video for 5 days is $3.91 with tax.) Ask them if they've ever visited any of the sites that are $5 or $10 for an entire month's worth of videos, and they'll tell you they just get crappy shit for that price. The videos are too small, too dark, too grainy, too much trouble to click on the next video portion's link every 30 seconds, etc etc. Also that it's TOO HARD to find REAL sites, it wastes way too much time to hunt through advertisements and "sample" clips and galleries to find their way to a site they might actually like.
These folks are simply oversaturated when they try to go online and look for porn. They want 5 choices, not 15000. Their attempts have been frustrating, confusing, and a total waste of time. They HATE pop-ups. They are scared shitless of spyware, trojans, and scripts that might spring up a porn advertisement hours or even days later, and their opinion is that it just IS NOT WORTH THE RISK. Not to their wives finding out, mind you, but the risk to their computers and their data. They DO shop online, and quite frequently, at mainstream online outlets (like Amazon) and so far everyone I've asked who does have a computer plans to do the majority of their xmas shopping online. They are not afraid of computers, they're not afraid of using their credit cards online... they're afraid of all of the nasty junk that comes along *with* porn (multiple charges, getting screwed with no content that they were promised, fucked up computers, browsers that fill the whole screen and won't close, etc).
Quite literally, the online porn industry has really put a severe hurting on itself with these unsavory practices. I always thought so, but boy now I believe it heart and soul. I *hear* it from the customers on a daily basis. You guys think that only the stupid people or the brainless AOL users who can't click their way out of a paper bag are the ones being scared off by chained pop-ups and active X scripts? Think again. Seriously... think again. You are chasing credit-card using, eager-to-buy-online, intelligent, loyal long-term users BACK to the brick and mortar stores, folks.
The mainstream part of the store - we rent a movie out, it will come back 5 days later on its due date or past its due date, and most drop the movies through the slot and don't rent anything to take with them. The porn side of the store - most of the movies are back the next day and many even the same night, and the customers ALMOST ALWAYS rent something else to take with them. (I'd say 80% of the time they rent/buy something to take with them.)
We do have the niche stuff, like pantyhose and hairy women and smoking women, etc - it doesn't move. The softcore stuff rents a bit, but not much. The majority of our rentals/sales are hardcore. The more hardcore, the better. Our main categories are (in this order) hardcore girl/guy and gangbang, black women and interracial (black men with white women, not white men with black women), gay men, girl-girl, boobs, trannies. Teens is NOT a big seller. We rent more MILF stuff than teen stuff, and more MILF than college-aged girls. (I'm talking MILF girls that are actually in their 30's, not grannies - grannies sells about as well as teens, which ain't much). We do more "average girl" or "unknown girl" than "well known pornstar" by leaps and bounds. The guys PREFER the new girls, fresh faces, and non-pornstar girl-next-door (that he might actually be able to fuck) appeal.
They do not believe that any person who does porn could ever possibly be shy (like Aria, for example). I've had a few folks actually argue with me that Aria is NOT shy and that she most likely jumps on any woman that comes within ten feet of her. My questions of "Have you ever MET Aria in person? Have you ever sat down and talked with her? With her sister?" get a dumbfounded look. And then, of course, their jaws drop open when I tell them that I have and she is in fact a very sweet, shy person. Some of them still simply refuse to believe that she's shy - maybe it would ruin their fantasy of her or something so they stay in denial.
Our POV and Virtual stuff rents like crazy. Except when it's got the name of a big pornstar (like Jenna Jameson) attached. Our customers want unknown girls, not big pornstars who are most likely faking every second of it. (No matter that the unknowns are probably faking it too.)
True to what you'll hear in the convention seminars, all of our customers who rent tranny videos are straight men. I have the ability to look back over 8 months of rental history on each customer with just one press of a function key, and for all of them, their history is straight hardcore girl/guy stuff. Not even M/M/F or Bi stuff in there. They also usually rent straight girl/guy stuff along WITH their rental of a tranny video.
At least a fourth of our customers back there are FEMALE. Most of them are renting things to watch WITH their husbands/boyfriends, and most of them browse the store WITH their husbands/boyfriends. I've seen so many giggling women gleefully dragging their genuinely reluctant husbands back there. One guy even stood at the door and refused to come any further while his wife teased him with all kinds of goodies from one of the novelty aisles. She eventually picked out and rented a movie (and bought a pillow pack of "spanish fly" lube) while he went and waited in the car.
The women who do the browsing and renting (not just following their men around with big grins on their faces) rent only girl/guy and girl-girl stuff. No gay male videos, no solo girl videos, no solo guy videos. (Btw, there are not enough solo guy videos on the market. Someone needs to fix that.) They'll also rent "gangbang" type videos, multiple men on one or two women... but never a Bi situation like M/M/F where the guy does the woman and also the second guy.
Both the men AND the women DO want to try out the "alternatives" to Viagra (Vigor-20, etc) but the only reason they don't is because they A. don't believe it will really do anything and B. the packaging does not sell the product.
Along with renting videos, we also do sales. The "value" movies priced at $5.95 and $7.95 DO NOT SELL. It doesn't matter if it's something made by Private or endorsed by AVN or has incredible crisp clear photographs on the front... the customers see the price and think it's trash. The videos for $12.95 sell okay, most customers buy 1 at time. The videos for $19.95 and $24.95 fly out of the door. Most customers buy 3 of these at a time, a good portion of them buy more than 3 at a time. Quite a few of the "regulars" buy and rent at the same time, multiple times per week.
We have guys that come in every single day as soon as they get off of work. They know these videos by heart. In a series of 24 videos, they can tell you exactly what happens in each one - just name a number. They are very loyal to a *producer's* name (but not a content girl's name). If they find a producer they like, they WILL stick with him and immediately rent anything new he puts out.
The first mistake of online webmasters also spreads over to guys who make DVDs... not matching the content with the title. We have a video called "Angry Housewives" that has a girl who looks to be freshly 18 on the front and she is NOT wearing a ring on her finger. HELLO?? That video does not move. The videos where the women actually look old enough to be married (very late twenties at the LEAST, preferably 30's) and that ARE wearing rings on their fingers fly off of the shelves. Our customers love the "cheating housewife" idea.
Anyhow... DVD makers... for god's sake, make sure your content matches your title/description. Your competitors are, and because of it, they're outselling you by leaps and bounds.
Our owner (who owns five stores and is planning on opening quite a few more in the next two years) knows absolutely NOTHING about porn or how to pick it or how to sell it, nor does his district manager, nor do his store managers. I swear to god, it's sad. This guy is basically just shooting in the dark and he's still making money hand over fist because the customers want it THAT badly. His form of "research" is going to the AVN this January. The few managers he's taking with him are all giddy over going... not because of the stuff they'll get to see and the products they'll get to examine or of how much they'll learn... but because they're going to get to pose for pictures with this pornstar or that one. (*rolling eyes*)
I asked one of my managers if they're going to Internext while they're out there for AVN and I got the "oh yeah, all of them" answer (with a literal wave of his hand, even) and further questioning revealed that he has no idea what Internext is - and he doesn't even know that he doesn't know what Internext is. He truly thinks he knows what it is. And no, they're not attending it. (Thank god for you guys, less brainless oglers slobbering over your booth babes.)
For those of you who do product (not video) sales... we out here in the field desperately need samples to give away as promo packs (whether they're free from you or something we can order, doesn't matter - we just need samples with great sample-oriented packaging). We need printed info (tri-fold pamphlets, postcards, jazzy text-filled business cards, whatever) about your product that we can give to the customers and slip into their bags (even if it's just a few master copies that we can mass-reproduce on our end). We need signage and advertising of all sizes and shapes (from small counter displays to posters to 3'x6' banners). If you're not producing this stuff and making it available to your brick and mortar retailers, YOU ARE LOSING SALES!! The customers are very curious and eager to buy but you give them no info on your products! Let's face it, you can't squeeze much convincing text onto a pillow packet of lube or a half-business card with a plastic baggie containing two pills attached. The customers need MORE. They ARE willing to spend. They are EAGER to spend. But they need to know MORE and your product needs to convince them to try it out!
For those of you who do DVDs... please consider doing posters featuring your newest girls or newest video and distributing these to your retailers. On a shelf with 7 other videos, a section with 64 other videos, and a wall with over a thousand other videos, your DVD's cover is doing a major battle to win eyeballs. If you had a poster we could put up featuring your new video or girl, your video WOULD fly off of the shelf so much that we'd need to order many, many more for rental and a good stock for straight sales as well. I am amazed at all of the poster space that we have back there that ISN'T dedicated to the porn stuff... and it's ONLY because the producers do not produce posters for us to use! Out of twenty current poster spots that we have (we have a ton of wall space where we could put up more), only ONE has a porn poster in it, advertising the porn movie "Pirates" (gorgeous poster, by the way). The rest are all mainstream movies just because we don't have posters for the porn stuff.
Get with the program... you cannot televise trailers of your videos like the mainstream movies do, but you CAN do everything else that they do. One of the biggest ways they push movies is with posters and product tie-ins. Make posters! Get with some herbal viagra manufacturer and do a fucking product tie-in! Why are you letting Playboy and Penthouse be the only ones to do tie-ins with their fake Jenna pussies and famous-pornstar-recommended lube?? YOU can do this too! All it takes is a meeting with someone and some simple paper advertisement that can be attached to any product (over the neck of a bottle of lube, for example). Do it! If you want to be a "big boy", ACT like one! Quit sitting there making videos wishing you could do more sales and thinking that brick-and-mortar or offline sales is dead - it most certainly is NOT. YOU simply aren't taking advantage of time-tested methods of selling offline products. If you were, you would see an increase in sales.
I haven't yet had the opportunity to do a sit-down with the owner and fill his head with ideas about how to improve on the adult side of his store, but I've started a list of bullet points and it's already getting too damn long, LOL. I can't wait to tell him about Todd's glass dildos and the ass-kicking display we could do with those babies.
Sabby, girl, you NEED to record some of your online sessions and make DVDs out of them... you're missing out on a revenue stream and I know how you hate that, LOL.
And for the craziest video I've ever seen on our shelves... it's called "Sista Twista" and we actually keep it in the "mature" (softcore) section of the mainstream part of the store.
This video, I kid you not, is naked black women playing the game Twister in someone's living room. (You know, left hand on green, right foot on red...) That's it. We can't keep the thing on the shelf. As soon as it comes in, it goes out within the hour. We have folks coming in ASKING for the damn thing on recommendation from their friends. One of those where you just shake your head and say "ooooookaaaaay...." *blink blink*
http://cover6.cduniverse.com/CDUCoverArt/video/Large/80750004719.jpg
Oh, and also a surprising number of our customers are senior citizens (quite a few senior citizen couples, too). We've even had a senior citizen lady come in and buy the biggest black double-ended dildo we sell. Woohoo!
Some major points to reiterate:
1. Offline sales are NOT dead; far from it. In fact due to the shady practices of online adult websites, there seems to be a resurgence in offline sales. You guys are driving customers back to brick and mortar.
2. Customers are ready, willing, and EAGER to buy - to those with the savvy to actually SELL them their product.
3. Your retailers NEED more advertising (signage, posters) from you.
4. Big pornstars are OUT, fresh faces are IN.
5. In our store at least, teens are OUT, REAL WOMEN ARE IN. (Boy I love getting to say that.)
6. If you think everything I said above is info that only brick and mortar people can use and not online webmasters, save yourself the time and effort and get out of the business now.
If you have adult products/videos that you sell offline, or if you do promo printed tickets to your sites that can be given away offline (with access codes or numbers, etc), or if you're one of those companies that makes the "porn access" cards that are sold offline... please send me a URL where I can browse your stuff and your contact info. (No affiliates, please.)
My email is carrie :)at :)gotkinky
dot
:)com:)
(Smileys to avoid email spiders... sorry)
I am (gasp) working now in a video store that has a "front" section and a three-times-as-large "back" section. The back, of course, is all porn. We do one hell of a hefty business in there. Three times (at least) as much as the front "mainstream movies" part.
I walk around the store and see DVDs of Homegrown girls, the BangBus guys, even Anjalie (Meat and Aga's Indian girl site)... all kinds of stuff. I keep expecting to move something one day and find some video of Sabby or Claudia. I am still being surprised each night I work and am straightening up the shelves... I know her... I know her... I know the guy that owns that company... oh my god X does Brick & Mortar DVDs too?... etc etc etc
Anyhow, you wouldn't believe what the customers think of porn people - both the content girls/guys and the folks who own/run the company. They don't see it as a business at ALL... they honestly think that those content folks go around screwing everything they see and are total nymphos. They think the guys running the businesses are all extreme playboys who do nothing more than fuck models on casting couches all day long and that most of the business owners/producers look like Ron Jeremy (current state, not 20 yrs ago) and live like gods with money falling out of their hairy, pimply asses.
They completely do NOT get the concept that a content girl will only do solo and girl-girl shoots because she wants to keep her "untouchable" appeal to her male fans... every one I've talked to thinks a girl who does that is simply a lesbian. No other reason. She's just a lesbian. Hello?!?
The majority of the customers DO own computers and HAVE gone online but PREFER the brick and mortar store and videos because they get far more time "with the girls" for a tenth of the price. (At our store, one video for 5 days is $3.91 with tax.) Ask them if they've ever visited any of the sites that are $5 or $10 for an entire month's worth of videos, and they'll tell you they just get crappy shit for that price. The videos are too small, too dark, too grainy, too much trouble to click on the next video portion's link every 30 seconds, etc etc. Also that it's TOO HARD to find REAL sites, it wastes way too much time to hunt through advertisements and "sample" clips and galleries to find their way to a site they might actually like.
These folks are simply oversaturated when they try to go online and look for porn. They want 5 choices, not 15000. Their attempts have been frustrating, confusing, and a total waste of time. They HATE pop-ups. They are scared shitless of spyware, trojans, and scripts that might spring up a porn advertisement hours or even days later, and their opinion is that it just IS NOT WORTH THE RISK. Not to their wives finding out, mind you, but the risk to their computers and their data. They DO shop online, and quite frequently, at mainstream online outlets (like Amazon) and so far everyone I've asked who does have a computer plans to do the majority of their xmas shopping online. They are not afraid of computers, they're not afraid of using their credit cards online... they're afraid of all of the nasty junk that comes along *with* porn (multiple charges, getting screwed with no content that they were promised, fucked up computers, browsers that fill the whole screen and won't close, etc).
Quite literally, the online porn industry has really put a severe hurting on itself with these unsavory practices. I always thought so, but boy now I believe it heart and soul. I *hear* it from the customers on a daily basis. You guys think that only the stupid people or the brainless AOL users who can't click their way out of a paper bag are the ones being scared off by chained pop-ups and active X scripts? Think again. Seriously... think again. You are chasing credit-card using, eager-to-buy-online, intelligent, loyal long-term users BACK to the brick and mortar stores, folks.
The mainstream part of the store - we rent a movie out, it will come back 5 days later on its due date or past its due date, and most drop the movies through the slot and don't rent anything to take with them. The porn side of the store - most of the movies are back the next day and many even the same night, and the customers ALMOST ALWAYS rent something else to take with them. (I'd say 80% of the time they rent/buy something to take with them.)
We do have the niche stuff, like pantyhose and hairy women and smoking women, etc - it doesn't move. The softcore stuff rents a bit, but not much. The majority of our rentals/sales are hardcore. The more hardcore, the better. Our main categories are (in this order) hardcore girl/guy and gangbang, black women and interracial (black men with white women, not white men with black women), gay men, girl-girl, boobs, trannies. Teens is NOT a big seller. We rent more MILF stuff than teen stuff, and more MILF than college-aged girls. (I'm talking MILF girls that are actually in their 30's, not grannies - grannies sells about as well as teens, which ain't much). We do more "average girl" or "unknown girl" than "well known pornstar" by leaps and bounds. The guys PREFER the new girls, fresh faces, and non-pornstar girl-next-door (that he might actually be able to fuck) appeal.
They do not believe that any person who does porn could ever possibly be shy (like Aria, for example). I've had a few folks actually argue with me that Aria is NOT shy and that she most likely jumps on any woman that comes within ten feet of her. My questions of "Have you ever MET Aria in person? Have you ever sat down and talked with her? With her sister?" get a dumbfounded look. And then, of course, their jaws drop open when I tell them that I have and she is in fact a very sweet, shy person. Some of them still simply refuse to believe that she's shy - maybe it would ruin their fantasy of her or something so they stay in denial.
Our POV and Virtual stuff rents like crazy. Except when it's got the name of a big pornstar (like Jenna Jameson) attached. Our customers want unknown girls, not big pornstars who are most likely faking every second of it. (No matter that the unknowns are probably faking it too.)
True to what you'll hear in the convention seminars, all of our customers who rent tranny videos are straight men. I have the ability to look back over 8 months of rental history on each customer with just one press of a function key, and for all of them, their history is straight hardcore girl/guy stuff. Not even M/M/F or Bi stuff in there. They also usually rent straight girl/guy stuff along WITH their rental of a tranny video.
At least a fourth of our customers back there are FEMALE. Most of them are renting things to watch WITH their husbands/boyfriends, and most of them browse the store WITH their husbands/boyfriends. I've seen so many giggling women gleefully dragging their genuinely reluctant husbands back there. One guy even stood at the door and refused to come any further while his wife teased him with all kinds of goodies from one of the novelty aisles. She eventually picked out and rented a movie (and bought a pillow pack of "spanish fly" lube) while he went and waited in the car.
The women who do the browsing and renting (not just following their men around with big grins on their faces) rent only girl/guy and girl-girl stuff. No gay male videos, no solo girl videos, no solo guy videos. (Btw, there are not enough solo guy videos on the market. Someone needs to fix that.) They'll also rent "gangbang" type videos, multiple men on one or two women... but never a Bi situation like M/M/F where the guy does the woman and also the second guy.
Both the men AND the women DO want to try out the "alternatives" to Viagra (Vigor-20, etc) but the only reason they don't is because they A. don't believe it will really do anything and B. the packaging does not sell the product.
Along with renting videos, we also do sales. The "value" movies priced at $5.95 and $7.95 DO NOT SELL. It doesn't matter if it's something made by Private or endorsed by AVN or has incredible crisp clear photographs on the front... the customers see the price and think it's trash. The videos for $12.95 sell okay, most customers buy 1 at time. The videos for $19.95 and $24.95 fly out of the door. Most customers buy 3 of these at a time, a good portion of them buy more than 3 at a time. Quite a few of the "regulars" buy and rent at the same time, multiple times per week.
We have guys that come in every single day as soon as they get off of work. They know these videos by heart. In a series of 24 videos, they can tell you exactly what happens in each one - just name a number. They are very loyal to a *producer's* name (but not a content girl's name). If they find a producer they like, they WILL stick with him and immediately rent anything new he puts out.
The first mistake of online webmasters also spreads over to guys who make DVDs... not matching the content with the title. We have a video called "Angry Housewives" that has a girl who looks to be freshly 18 on the front and she is NOT wearing a ring on her finger. HELLO?? That video does not move. The videos where the women actually look old enough to be married (very late twenties at the LEAST, preferably 30's) and that ARE wearing rings on their fingers fly off of the shelves. Our customers love the "cheating housewife" idea.
Anyhow... DVD makers... for god's sake, make sure your content matches your title/description. Your competitors are, and because of it, they're outselling you by leaps and bounds.
Our owner (who owns five stores and is planning on opening quite a few more in the next two years) knows absolutely NOTHING about porn or how to pick it or how to sell it, nor does his district manager, nor do his store managers. I swear to god, it's sad. This guy is basically just shooting in the dark and he's still making money hand over fist because the customers want it THAT badly. His form of "research" is going to the AVN this January. The few managers he's taking with him are all giddy over going... not because of the stuff they'll get to see and the products they'll get to examine or of how much they'll learn... but because they're going to get to pose for pictures with this pornstar or that one. (*rolling eyes*)
I asked one of my managers if they're going to Internext while they're out there for AVN and I got the "oh yeah, all of them" answer (with a literal wave of his hand, even) and further questioning revealed that he has no idea what Internext is - and he doesn't even know that he doesn't know what Internext is. He truly thinks he knows what it is. And no, they're not attending it. (Thank god for you guys, less brainless oglers slobbering over your booth babes.)
For those of you who do product (not video) sales... we out here in the field desperately need samples to give away as promo packs (whether they're free from you or something we can order, doesn't matter - we just need samples with great sample-oriented packaging). We need printed info (tri-fold pamphlets, postcards, jazzy text-filled business cards, whatever) about your product that we can give to the customers and slip into their bags (even if it's just a few master copies that we can mass-reproduce on our end). We need signage and advertising of all sizes and shapes (from small counter displays to posters to 3'x6' banners). If you're not producing this stuff and making it available to your brick and mortar retailers, YOU ARE LOSING SALES!! The customers are very curious and eager to buy but you give them no info on your products! Let's face it, you can't squeeze much convincing text onto a pillow packet of lube or a half-business card with a plastic baggie containing two pills attached. The customers need MORE. They ARE willing to spend. They are EAGER to spend. But they need to know MORE and your product needs to convince them to try it out!
For those of you who do DVDs... please consider doing posters featuring your newest girls or newest video and distributing these to your retailers. On a shelf with 7 other videos, a section with 64 other videos, and a wall with over a thousand other videos, your DVD's cover is doing a major battle to win eyeballs. If you had a poster we could put up featuring your new video or girl, your video WOULD fly off of the shelf so much that we'd need to order many, many more for rental and a good stock for straight sales as well. I am amazed at all of the poster space that we have back there that ISN'T dedicated to the porn stuff... and it's ONLY because the producers do not produce posters for us to use! Out of twenty current poster spots that we have (we have a ton of wall space where we could put up more), only ONE has a porn poster in it, advertising the porn movie "Pirates" (gorgeous poster, by the way). The rest are all mainstream movies just because we don't have posters for the porn stuff.
Get with the program... you cannot televise trailers of your videos like the mainstream movies do, but you CAN do everything else that they do. One of the biggest ways they push movies is with posters and product tie-ins. Make posters! Get with some herbal viagra manufacturer and do a fucking product tie-in! Why are you letting Playboy and Penthouse be the only ones to do tie-ins with their fake Jenna pussies and famous-pornstar-recommended lube?? YOU can do this too! All it takes is a meeting with someone and some simple paper advertisement that can be attached to any product (over the neck of a bottle of lube, for example). Do it! If you want to be a "big boy", ACT like one! Quit sitting there making videos wishing you could do more sales and thinking that brick-and-mortar or offline sales is dead - it most certainly is NOT. YOU simply aren't taking advantage of time-tested methods of selling offline products. If you were, you would see an increase in sales.
I haven't yet had the opportunity to do a sit-down with the owner and fill his head with ideas about how to improve on the adult side of his store, but I've started a list of bullet points and it's already getting too damn long, LOL. I can't wait to tell him about Todd's glass dildos and the ass-kicking display we could do with those babies.
Sabby, girl, you NEED to record some of your online sessions and make DVDs out of them... you're missing out on a revenue stream and I know how you hate that, LOL.
And for the craziest video I've ever seen on our shelves... it's called "Sista Twista" and we actually keep it in the "mature" (softcore) section of the mainstream part of the store.
This video, I kid you not, is naked black women playing the game Twister in someone's living room. (You know, left hand on green, right foot on red...) That's it. We can't keep the thing on the shelf. As soon as it comes in, it goes out within the hour. We have folks coming in ASKING for the damn thing on recommendation from their friends. One of those where you just shake your head and say "ooooookaaaaay...." *blink blink*
http://cover6.cduniverse.com/CDUCoverArt/video/Large/80750004719.jpg
Oh, and also a surprising number of our customers are senior citizens (quite a few senior citizen couples, too). We've even had a senior citizen lady come in and buy the biggest black double-ended dildo we sell. Woohoo!
Some major points to reiterate:
1. Offline sales are NOT dead; far from it. In fact due to the shady practices of online adult websites, there seems to be a resurgence in offline sales. You guys are driving customers back to brick and mortar.
2. Customers are ready, willing, and EAGER to buy - to those with the savvy to actually SELL them their product.
3. Your retailers NEED more advertising (signage, posters) from you.
4. Big pornstars are OUT, fresh faces are IN.
5. In our store at least, teens are OUT, REAL WOMEN ARE IN. (Boy I love getting to say that.)
6. If you think everything I said above is info that only brick and mortar people can use and not online webmasters, save yourself the time and effort and get out of the business now.
If you have adult products/videos that you sell offline, or if you do promo printed tickets to your sites that can be given away offline (with access codes or numbers, etc), or if you're one of those companies that makes the "porn access" cards that are sold offline... please send me a URL where I can browse your stuff and your contact info. (No affiliates, please.)
My email is carrie :)at :)gotkinky
dot
:)com:)
(Smileys to avoid email spiders... sorry)