Vivid Entertainment, Inc. has signed an agreement with a Chatsworth company to distribute its popular line of adult DVDs. Vivid, one of the largest producers of adult videos and home to its stable of adult female stars dubbed Vivid Girls, severed its ties with Larry Flynt Productions after three years and joined forces with Pulse Distribution, said Vivid Co-chairman Steven Hirsch. Leading Pulse, based in Chatsworth, are James Kohls and Mark Hamilton, themselves former employees of LFP. The previous relationship with the pair made it easier to make the switch to their new company, Hirsch said. Describing Pulse as “a young, hungry” company, Hirsch said that he likes the personal attention Vivid will receive for their account. That attention stems from the fact that Pulse is not a production company and instead represents studios, Hamilton said. “Sometimes companies with a large library of their own find it hard to pay the same amount of attention to another studio they might be distributing,” Hamilton added. Pulse will begin distributing Vivid product beginning Aug. 1. Hirsch and David James founded Vivid in 1984. In recent years, the company has branched out into other products, including snowboards, apparel and a high-end line of wheels for luxury cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks. In 2005, the company opened a club under its brand name at The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. According to a March 2005 profile on Hirsch in Fortune magazine, Vivid’s estimated revenues hit the $100 million mark. Films are made for between $40,000 to $200,000 and take in between $80,000 and $250,000 annually. Vivid’s product is also available online, pay-per-view, satellite and cable. The split with LFP was “mutually agreed on” Hirsch said, adding that it was time for Vivid to go in a new direction. Industry changes Central to going with a new distributor are the changes in the adult entertainment industry as content becomes available through a variety of platforms, be it broadcast, Internet downloads or video-on-demand, or the emerging mobile device market. “As a result of that it becomes that much more important to be able to work with a distributor whose main business is distributing DVDs,” Hirsch said. Kohls and Hamilton launched Pulse in August 2005 and distribute films from 24 straight and gay studios, including its own Pulse Pictures division. The company also distributes a line of adult novelties. Home video sales and rentals accounted for $4.28 billion in sales in 2005, nearly a quarter of the revenues generated by adult entertainment, according to an industry study from Adult Video News. Adult film companies released 13,500 hardcore titles last year, an increase of more than 1,500 over 2004. Although Hirsch did not know what Vivid’s market share was, the company releases 60 new titles a year, the most of any adult film provider. The adult entertainment industry generated $800 million in cable and pay-per-view, $2.5 billion from the Internet, $500 million from hotel room video on demand, and $35 million from mobile use, according to the AVN study. Even with other outlets available for adult content, DVDs for the foreseeable future will remain a critical part of a company’s revenue stream. But one way to make sure that Pulse stays on top of technology is to work with companies that make a high quality product, Hamilton said. Companies that are putting movies out just to get them out onto the market without the right care and attention to quality are going to suffer as technology pulls customers away from DVDs, Hamilton said. “The higher quality the movie is the more people are going to want to keep it as part of their DVD collection down the road,” Hamilton said.
