The adult video-on-demand company announced this week that it is concentrating on becoming a market leader there, striking numerous deals with Asian content providers, including one that will add more than 100 new titles from Japanese studio Dream Station.
“We estimate that in the years 2006 and 2007, Japan should become one of our biggest markets, and we should be able to see greater expansion of our company,” AEBN President Scott Coffman said.
In addition, the Charlotte, N.C.-based company also partnered with E-Station, a Japanese television satellite company, which gives AEBN the rights to stream its content. And it recently completed a deal with German studio Megafilm for Japanese consumption.
AEBN also has found Japanese sources for its news, including Boyslove.co.jp. The portal recently held a contest hosted by AEBN affiliate LustyLibrary.com and Adam & Eve.
Coffman says the Japanese market has proven to be a difficult one for American adult entertainment companies to penetrate. But he said that AEBN has procured enough Japanese titles to create an entire “mosaic” category, but it also offers non-mosaic Japanese content.
Japanese censorship laws dating back centuries make it illegal for any media being released in that country to show male or female genitalia, so Japanese videographers typically obscure it by using a post-production technique referred to as “mosaic,” which pixilates a blurred image.
“I think we’ve done a great job of penetrating into the Japanese market,” Coffman said. “We have made a calculated effort on our part to reach out and to try to build some type of partnership in the Japanese market.
“We feel that the Japanese market is completely necessary for us to be a worldwide corporation. By not being able to penetrate that market, it’s really not acceptable to call ourselves a global company.”