Hindi dvd rental

By Andrew Asch

With one of his toughest rivals nearly at his doorstep, Chris Park should be exploring bankruptcy.

Hollywood Video, the second largest video store chain in America, stands several storefronts down from Park's modest video store, 20/ 20. The clout of the chain's 1,800 stores alone would mean trouble for any other video retailer.

But Park's Redondo Beach store is shielded by a saving grace of sorts. 20/20 hawks something that the biggest chains, Hollywood Video and Blockbuster, won't touch: pornography.

Park claims more than 60 percent of his revenue comes from adult videos and DVDs. His claim is supported by the steady stream of men visiting the store's burgeoning adult section, which fills the entire second floor of 20/20.

It's a strange business for Park. He claims to never having been a pornography fan growing up in Texas.

"It's sort of overwhelming," Park, 27, admits. "I go upstairs and I don't know where to start."

He's not alone. Most independent video retailers in the South Bay and across America rent and sell adult titles. It's one of the few solid revenue sources that allows them to compete against the deep pockets of the chains, said Freddie Gutierrez, manager of Video Shack in Hawthorne.

"It's been a life saver and it's been pretty much the backbone of the store," Gutierrez said. Adult titles comprise 50 percent of Video Shack's revenue. They've kept the store afloat for 15 years despite robust competition from a Blockbuster less than a mile west.

Pornography isn't the only avenue that helps keep an independent video store in business. The secret is finding the weakness of the corporate behemoths and running with it. It's life or death in a business where Blockbuster and Hollywood Video are gold medal competitors.

Blockbuster reported total revenue of $5.16 billion in 2001. Hollywood Video's total revenue was more than $1.4 billion that year.

If competition seems rough, many independents survive by specializing in other niches such as DVDs or ethnic and classic and art films. Adult films are the most popular, and independent retailers aren't shy about acknowledging it.

The Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) honored porn star Jenna Jameson with an adult star of the year award at its 2002 Home Entertainment Awards show in Las Vegas. Likewise, the VSDA maintains an Adult Advisory Committee to help retailers build adult sections in their shops that will attract aficionados of adult films and not offend customers uninterested in pornography. It's the least they could do to protect a golden goose.

Whereas mainstream titles grossed more than $20.3 billion from video and DVD rentals in 2002, according to the VSDA, the adult industry made $4.04 billion in rentals and sales of its videos and DVDs, according to Adult Video News, the trade journal of the adult video industry.

In 1992, this industry earned $1.6 billion from total sales and rentals, said Mike Ramone, the editor in chief of Adult Video News. "Sex is a recession-proof industry," Ramone said. "While the rest of the country is mired in an economic downturn, the adult industry is growing by leaps and bounds."

Of course, it's nothing that interests Blockbuster, spokesman Blake Lugash said. "We choose to not carry any films beyond R rating. It doesn't match the preference of customers we serve. We think we're better served by creating a family-friendly environment," he said.

Park of 20/20 Video said he runs a family-friendly environment as well. The downstairs of the store rents the similar choices to Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. "I get a lot of families that come here," Park said. "They understand you got to do what you got to do. They know it's a business."

The secret of the adult business is return business. While Park's patrons will only rent between one and two mainstream titles each visit, the adult film patrons will rent three to five. Also, mainstream VHS titles cost retailers $60 to $100 to buy; adult VHS titles cost retailers between $15 and $40.

The playing field could be leveled, however, as the DVD format overtakes VHS. Mainstream DVDs cost $16 to $22. Adult DVDs cost the same. Older, less popular adult titles cost $4 to $8, according to an unscientific survey of video retailers.

Adult titles also should remain competitive compared with the Internet, said Justin, a musician browsing adult videos at Movies N' Joy videos in San Pedro. He declined to give his last name.

"It's not reliable," Justin said of Internet porn. "They never show what they promised to show, and they send you so much junk e- mail. With videos I can get everything I want for $10 a pop," Justin said.

Adult film fans are not the only ones who feel ignored by the big chains. Immigrant communities such as Indian and Pakistani Americans are often at a loss to find their nations' dramas, comedies and soap operas in American video stores, despite India being home to one of the biggest film industries in the world.

Archana Mehrotra, a 36-year-old homemaker from Lomita, complained she could only find English language Indian videos at Blockbuster.

"I could find 'Monsoon Wedding,' but there were so few other videos," Mehrotra said. "I had no choice (but) to come here."

Mehrotra is talking about Filmistan Retail & Rental in Torrance. The two-year-old store rents videos and DVDs in four Indian languages: Hindi, Urdu, Tamil and Telegu.

Owners Asif Ali and Sikander and Andrea Bhutto originally had hoped to get into the restaurant business. But when a storefront opened next to an Indian grocery and an Indian deli, they changed their plans to renting out videos, hoping they would attract customers picking up South Asian groceries and delicacies.

Their hunch was right. Business increased by 30 percent last year, Andrea Bhutto said. Admittedly, the Bhuttos picked a good niche. Their main competition is 20 miles away in the Little India section of Artesia. Their distributors frequently renew stock, two to six new movies are delivered each week, and best of all, people from the Indian subcontinent are famously film crazy, Bhutto said.

"It's part of their culture. They may not have money to buy food, but they'll spend money on movies," she said.

Other weaknesses in the big chains' video stock are art films, foreign films and movies made before 1980. These films are the specialty of Redondo Beach's Video Out-takes, and the reason why it has remained in business for 22 years, said Tony Dunn, the owner.

"We're not just a video store. We're a video library," Dunn said.

The store looks more like a well-worn used bookstore than a library with its walls covered by movie memorabilia and its shelves stocked with obscure cult films, every movie by foreign directors like Federico Fellini, film classics and current Hollywood hits, and adult movies.

His clientele, many over 40, and many advertisement production companies and feature film firms will scout his store for obscure movies to watch or to splice into their products.

But it's not a business that would satisfy aggressive stockholders. "We break even. We buy movies and pay bills. It's decent," Dunn said.

Serving fans of the latest home entertainment technology turned into a profitable niche for Frederick Dilworth, owner of Redondo Beach's Disc Is It. The store specializes in DVDs and rode the format's first wave of excitement to success.

Now that DVDs are no longer exotic technology, Dilworth's strategy is to keep people coming to the store with fresh novelty. He offers the widest array of DVD titles he can jam into his 11,000-title library.

"Videophiles and audiophiles have been through everything and they're looking for new titles. People new to the DVD format are looking for older titles. It's our job to find everything. I give instant gratification," Dilworth said.

DVDs breathed new life into video retailing, which had nosedived in the late 1990s. Families buy 15 DVDs each year compared with five videos _ one of the reasons why the industry experienced a 12 percent burst of growth last year after a long period of consolidation and stagnation, said Sean Bersell, a spokesman for VSDA.

Now retailers are looking for the next big thing for this industry. Some say it will be high definition VHS or a blue laser DVD that claims to pack in more information and give more entertainment options than the DVDs on the market.

One thing is certain, said Richard Rostenberg, the chairman of VSDA's Adult Advisory Committee. Adult titles will take an active role in whatever new home entertainment technology has to offer, he said. "The first people buying VCRs were watching adult movies. The adult manufacturers were the first to utilize DVDs," Rostenberg said. "The adult industry leads the market, and the rest of the people followed."

Andrew Asch is a free-lance writer based in Long Beach.

U.S. video and rental sales