Under the new distribution system, which was announced earlier this month, Pure Play will market direct to retailers instead of going through wholesale distributors.
Arnold told XBIZ that he has been selling direct to retail in Canada for 22 years.
"We feel that we have a strong enough studio selection that we can do our studios better justice by selling direct to retail," Arnold told XBIZ. "In other territories where we do direct to retail our sales are proportionally higher than in the U.S. under the old method. I think we're going to be proven correct."
Beside the anonymous postings, Arnold says that he has received some negative feedback from retailers, although the feedback has mostly been positive.
"We knew that shipping would be an issue," Arnold says. "Retailers don't like shipping charges, but everybody has to incur shipping and it’s a part of the business. What we do is add some DVDs to the shipment to help offset the costs."
The main advantage to retailers, Arnold said, will be in ordering back catalog items.
"We always expected to do well in new releases, but we're going to win or lose this battle in the catalog end of the business," Arnold said. "It was very difficult for a retailer to get catalog because it was a cumbersome process. Wholesalers don't carry it — they can't carry everybody's catalog — so if a retailer wants a catalog item, they have to contact their wholesaler, the wholesaler contacts us to find out what we have, we tell the wholesaler and then the wholesaler goes back to the retailer. And then it has to be shipped from us to the wholesaler to the retailer.
"Retailers are really liking the fact that we can tell them exactly what we have and we can ship it out to them right away. That's a big, big plus."
Arnold attributed much of the resistance to reluctance to change.
"Nobody likes change, but a lot of times change is for the better, and this is definitely better," Arnold said. "It's going to be better for us, but it's also going to be better for them."
Pure Play's studio roster includes Private, Homegrown Video, Naughty America, Seymore Butts Home Movies, Suze Randall, HellHouse Video, Swank, Score, Silver Sinema, Hundies and Pink Lotus.
Arnold's complete response has been posted here.
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