Page 32 - AVN December 2016

Q&A | | By Stewart Tongue
Ten on Top CherryPimps celebrates a decade of success
Focused on providing customers with
the best official porn star sites and live-
cam content for 10 consecutive years,
CherryPimps.com now features many
of the best known porn stars and cam
models from a wide variety of niches.
Why has the CherryPimps brand
succeeded through the years when
many others have fallen by the wayside,
and what comes next are questions
AVN asked in this interview with their
company CEO Jack Avalanche. And the
answers may be very useful to anyone
thinking of trying to build or expand
an adult brand in the current digital
climate.
AVN: Now that Cherry Pimps is turning 10, why did you start in adult and
what can we learn in hindsight?
Jack Avalanche: Simply put, it was fun. The environment allowed us to be free
and have fun while also learning and working in a constantly evolving landscape.
My wife and I are the originals, and over the years we have added designers and
developers that have been with us for over nine years. Having quality staff really
makes it all possible.
That combination of a fully focused core group that puts all of their effort into
a cooperative campaign to lift each site higher and enhance the overall network
for models, affiliates and fans has become the hallmark of the CherryPimps
brand. Whether other companies rely heavily on outsourced providers, or have
frequent turnover of their in-house technical people, continuity is what has
allowed CherryPimps to create and maintain a brand that speaks with one voice
even though it utilizes many singular channels to publish and promote its overall
success.
Has CherryPimps faced any adapt-or-die moments along the way?
Probably the most significant change is how much live content has really
become the key factor for our longevity. We look back to the numbers we did in
2008 with our solo models and their member shows, and only wish we’d made a
bigger move earlier on. We’ve been doing our live hardcore shows now for seven
years and now we offer something nobody else online can. Probably our biggest
value is simply to provide a good quality product to our consumers. We value their
input and genuinely work to provide what they desire.
Again, the answers from CherryPimps CEO are refreshingly simple. The secret
sauce of their success isn’t about a nifty new interface idea or a mind-blowing
marketing campaign. Instead it comes down to listening to customers, adjusting
to their desires and providing a top quality product that genuinely seeks to serve
their needs. While there is value of course in doing all the rest well, it’s the core
competency of CherryPimps when it comes to managing their community and
providing fresh content that creates the sustainable kind of success all long-term,
focused companies seek.
How has CherryPimps impacted the trajectory of adult industry trends?
We think we’ve been fairly big in pushing live content as a key component
of successful paysites. The show platform we developed with our partners at
Streamate has enabled many companies to launch show formats very similar to
WildonCam. This is what allowed us to bring back the official porn star site model
that actually updates and is more than just an archive site of old content. Fans
appreciate regular updates, and live shows, as evidenced by the fact that they’ll
pay for the enhanced experience as long as you deliver.
32 | AVN.com | 12.16
Interestingly, even when discussing the adult industry more broadly,
CherryPimps takes an introspective point of view. The company is always looking
for ways to improve its own products and seeing its influence in the ways its
advancements are copied or adapted to fit the business models of other brands.
Rather than overtly going out and trying to tell everyone else what they ought
to be doing, the CherryPimps way toward progress is one of doing what is right
for itself and demonstrating by example that much can be done to improve the
view many consumers have of the entire paysite format. Rather than pointlessly
whining or finger-pointing, it has proven to be much more productive over the
past 10 years to run their own race and focus on doing their own best without the
distractions of trying to gauge their results against the activities of competitors.
What’s coming from CherryPimps in the future?
We have quite a few things on the horizon, including over a dozen new sites
from top porn stars and top porn niches. We’ll be exhibiting and launching at the
upcoming Internext and AVN shows, and are excited to share our new projects.
In the longer term we see our relationship with live content becoming more and
more evolved. This combined with our plan to continue growing by adding more
sites makes us optimistic that we’ll definitely be around in another 10 years, even
bigger and stronger than ever.
The growth of course is balanced against the need to be picky when choosing
the right combination of performers to work with on existing and upcoming new
sites in the CherryPimps inventory. Already featuring an impressive roster that
includes Megan Rain, Adriana Chechik, Dillion Harper, Dana Vespoli, Adria Rae
and others, Avalanche was clear when he said, “We look for girls that understand
building a brand requires more than just looking hot, they have to be smart and
driven. We are very demanding of our contract stars, but we also put a lot into
them in return.
“Our keys to success have come from surrounding ourselves with solid partners
with similar long-term goals. Most specifically, Streamate, Epoch, SegPay and
affiliates such as FreeOnes, RabbitsReviews and TheBestPorn to name a few, along
with the contract stars that we feature.”
Perhaps most telling of all, while CherryPimps has been a powerful force behind
the scenes of adult online for an entire decade, it hasn’t accumulated a long list
of awards and honors for itself over the years. Instead, the company has always
preferred to keep the spotlight facing forward, so its amazing roster of performers
could gain the benefit of being nominated and awarded more honors than
one can easily list in a single magazine article. In their words and their action,
CherryPimps has continued to prove that longevity is much more about finding
ways to mutually benefit with all of the entities and people you work with than it
is about anything else.
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