Manufacturing-on-demand gains traction
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Amazon, Trans World expand services, offerings
By Jennifer Netherby -- Video Business, 8/3/2007
AUG. 3 | While major Internet video providers talk up a time in the future when niche content, including every movie ever made, will be available to consumers for download with the click of a mouse, manufacturing-on-demand services are gaining traction with such specialty content now.
Amazon.com’s DVD manufacturing-on-demand (MOD) service, CustomFlix Labs, inked a deal Monday with the National Archives and Records Administration to make historic films, documentaries and newsreels on such topics as the death of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the end of World War II and the royal wedding of Princess Margaret available on disc. The deal is the latest for CustomFlix, which has been rapidly building its library over the last two years through content deals with CBS News, ABC News, A&E and other content holders.
Others players also are getting into instant DVD manufacturing, partnering with online and store-based retailers to offer consumers a broadened selection of content.
Through a deal signed earlier this summer with Hewlett-Packard, Trans World Entertainment is seeing sales of a few units on the roughly 30 titles that are manufactured on demand when orders are received on the retailer’s Web site. Trans World is the first major bricks-and-mortar retailer to get into the MOD business, although H-P works with Wal-Mart on its online download site and plans to offer its DVD MOD service and movie download services to other retailers.
“It’s a relatively new business,” said Ish Cuebas, Trans World director of merchandising operations and new media. “You’re not going to see a lot going on yet, but we definitely think it’s a business going forward, especially for hard to find titles.”
Trans World plans to quickly add more titles to its on-demand selection and is eying hard to find titles for the manufacture-on-demand part of its business. The company wants to eventually incorporate MOD into its stores, whereby consumers could order a title online and pick it up in stores.
Allied Vaughn, which has provided manufacturing-on-demand services for National Geographic and one of the Turner Network channels, among other content holders, is in talks with retailers to make on-demand content available through their Web sites and stores.
Allied Vaughn managing director of media-on-demand Blair Zykan said that over the last 18 months, the company has seen increased interest among consumers in niche content it offers online.
“When offered the opportunity to access a larger library of content, consumers do choose from that larger library,” he said.
Amazon’s CustomFlix is selling everything from 60 Minutes interviews to Jon Favreau series Dinner for Five and now archival footage of the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate on demand through Amazon.
At a panel during the Home Media Expo, Amazon CustomFlix VP of content acquisition Larry Smith said on demand episodes of The Charlie Rose Show have been one of the most popular offerings, when grouped as one.
Earlier this year, hockey documentary In the Crease, manufactured on demand through CustomFlix, became the top-selling sports DVD on Amazon.
Similarly, You On a Diet: The Workout, a spinoff of the book of the same name, reached No. 7 on the overall Amazon DVD sales chart.
But most on-demand content sells just a few units, which is the point. Because a disc is pressed when ordered, content holders can afford to offer content that wouldn’t usually sell enough to garner shelf space at retail. Retailers can offer it to consumers without having to physically stock the product.
Allied Vaughn’s Zykan said retailers can be profitable on an MOD title by selling just 15-25 units a year.
Amazon’s CustomFlix has taken the MOD experience a step further, allowing customers to personalize DVDs, such as with recent addition Dinner For Five. Customers can choose which episodes and interviews from the series they want on their DVD.
The company launched the series offering with much fanfare at the Home Media Expo, where Amazon VP of music and movies Peter Faricy said the company sees manufacturing on demand as a way to provide more ways for customers to find more content than ever before.
“It’s one of the central pillars of our business,” he said. “We feel like it’s critical for our business.”
