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Will porn become the 'next big thing' in the kiosk industry?
May 13, 2011 by Cherryh Cansler — Editor, FastCasual.com
Look out DVD-rental kiosks— porn may take over as the go-to product in the self-service industry.
I recently wrote about a pornkioskbecause I liked the novelty of the idea— it seemed odd enough to feature in a blog. However, it may not be as an original concept as I once thought— there’s another company using kiosks to help retailers sell adult products and movies.
Unlike the kiosks I previously wrote about, E-tique’s kiosks don’t dispense adult products or movies. Instead, the adult website’s kiosks serve as marketing tools inside adult brick-and-mortar stores that carry E-tique products.
Basically, the kiosk has two basic functions. Customers and employees can scan QR codes on products stocked in a store to watch product demonstration videos or movie trailers. Secondly, customers can also special order products that are not in stock. Those orders will ship to the store or directly to the customer.
Retailers make margins similar to products they stock on their shelves, according to Becca Boring, the company’s vice president of Marketing.
“E-tique’s price structure is based on brick-and-mortar pricing, and the retailer keeps everything minus wholesale cost, plus 10 percent,” she said.
The kiosks, which are $2,999.99 and sold herequickly pay for themselves, Boring said.
“Even if retailers only make $15 a day at the kiosk, it will more then pay for itself in a year,” she said. “And because the kiosk does not compete with products on your shelves, rather offers a easy option for special orders, this is money the retailer would have otherwise not likely made.”
The company’s president, Donovan Green, also runs nine adult bookstores throughout California and Arizona and said in arecent interviewthat the kiosk design is simple. It features a QR code scanner and an all-in-one Dell computer.
“We’ve installed kiosks at all of our locations, and I’m noticing that the younger people are very receptive and not at all intimated,” Green said in the interview.
He also said the demo videos are informative and tend to increase product sales.
“There are a lot of products in the novelty industry that simply cannot be thoroughly explained on a box. It could help a manufacturer show the many different ways to use their products, and expose shoppers to methods they would never have imagined on their own at home.”
Green said the QR codes not only lead to product demos and movie previews, but they also allow in-store shoppers to order products even when they’re not in stock. That translates to retailers not losing a sale if the desired product isn’t on the shelf.
My question is whether this idea will catch on and if more companies and retailers will jump on the porn- kiosk bandwagon. I realize this is only the second use for porn in kiosks that I’ve covered, so it may seem a bit premature to predict it as the next big player to enter the industry. But once upon a time there were only a couple DVD kiosk companies in the market, and now there’s practically a new company launching every other week.
Like it or not, porn kiosks are probably here to stay.
About Cherryh Cansler
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