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MillimeterThe Last Mile
Oct 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Jeff Sauer
Delivering media to an audience can be the bumpiest part of the creation process, but there are creative ways around the bumps.
 Technology has made shooting and editing video easier, while distribution seems the final frontier of the digital revolution. |
Ah, duplication and fulfillment. They're not really the sexiest issues in the media creation chain. But glamorous or not, getting media to its intended audience is as critical a piece as any in the creation process. After all, no matter what the content, if no one sees it, any creative brilliance is pretty much moot.
Large Hollywood studios and corporations with inhouse duplication equipment may have a clear path to solving pesky duplication and fulfillment details. After all, economies of scale answer a lot of questions. But what are small organizations, independent studios, video producers, and individual content owners to do?
How does the producer of a targeted documentary on the birds of Mexico sell a few dozen copies to enthusiasts across the country? How can local TV stations profit from the wealth of raw footage they've acquired? How does the ambitious videographer of a local 10K road race create the take-home memories a few hundred participants would like to have? Do these people burn one-offs and lick stamps on the weekends? Do they contract a duplication run? If so, how many copies do they have made, and how many will end up as coasters?
Over the last decade, technology has picked off one problem after another, simplifying the creation of professional media with products that reduce the cost of entry and complexity of operation. Nonlinear editing tools are now inexpensive and easier to use. The DV recording format has brought professional-quality acquisition to small, affordable camcorders. And most recently, streaming media tools and inexpensive DVD authoring products have eased distribution roadblocks. Nonetheless, a bumpy ride still remains if audience numbers don't hit broadcast or Fortune 500 standards, especially when it comes to traversing the proverbial last mile and getting media to an actual audience.
Weren't the Internet and streaming video supposed to solve that problem? Can't anyone with a stream and a server reach all the people needed? Perhaps, but even assuming you have a scalable, bandwidth-rich streaming media server, reaching people is not easy if you go beyond the comfortable confines of a corporate LAN, where streaming media enjoys the luxury of bandwidth. Once you start trying to reach the public, the odds change. Dialup just won't do for receiving serious streaming content. Even high-speed connections — effective for news and information clips, movie trailers, and sports highlights — rarely carry the detail television viewers are used to.
For full-quality viewing, affordable DVD creation seems like a solid answer to the distribution problem. DVD players have been one of the most successful consumer electronic products ever. Annual sales have surpassed those of VHS players and are expected to reach 10,000,000 units sold this year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. Burning discs and sending them across town or across the country has become a reliable and effective way to share media.
But what if your sharing is on a grander scale, say 50 to 500 possible viewers? Worse still, what if you have content that you'd like to have seen, but don't really know what a potential market might be or how many viewers it will ultimately have? And what do you do about viewers who don't have DVD players?
A new company, CustomFlix, sees distribution and fulfillment as the final frontier of the digital video revolution that started a decade ago. It may have become dramatically easier to shoot, edit, and master content, but what then? CustomFlix thinks it can answer at least the logistics part of that question by delivering content to its audience with little capital outlay or effort on the part of the content owner. The company has created a web-based business designed for digital studios with video content they wish to sell or even might wish to sell.
CustomFlix assembles no media files for purchase or sharing at customflix.com, nor does it attempt to establish a web “community” of like-minded enthusiasts. Those are really the business models of the late '90s. Instead, CustomFlix clients (“members,” they're called, in a nod to those '90s web communities) pay just less than $50 to buy into a duplication and fulfillment service for a year. Members pay another $9.95 a year after that. CustomFlix doesn't even do any marketing or lead generation to help sell content. Boring? Maybe, but there's a twist.
CustomFlix is creating its own economies of scale through a semi-automated process to assist individual content owners in selling their own DVDs (or VHS tapes) on the Web. As part of the $50 for “joining,” you'll get a custom web page, complete with shopping cart and credit card purchasing.
And no, it's not a section of the main customflix.com website. It's your web page with your graphics and text, laid out by uploading your design files into a database-driven template. The URL can be linked directly to your own homepage. For your customers, there's no sign of CustomFlix or its other “members,” save a small “powered by” credit at the bottom of the page.
Bob Turner covered pricing details for CustomFlix last month (“Potential for Revenue,” September 2002), including a thorough analysis of CustomFlix costs versus other duplication and fulfillment options, but the logistics of working with CustomFlix are basically as follows.
You send CustomFlix a one-off DVD. You can send a master tape, too, and CustomFlix will copy it and distribute VHS tapes, or for an extra cost, starting at $249, it will create a DVD with chapters and basic navigation for you. CustomFlix will do all the duplication and shipping to anyone who orders either DVDs or VHS tapes. You set the end price to customers, CustomFlix takes the first $9.95 per order, plus 5%. For example, at the selling price of $29.95, you make $18.50 ($29.95 minus $9.95, less 5% or $1.50).
Ultimately, there's clearly a point with volume sales at which going the traditional route makes more sense than using CustomFlix. There's really nothing CustomFlix does that a reasonably sophisticated video producer with a DVD burner, web design skills, credit card approval, and a nearby post office can't do alone. Yet each of those pieces of the process takes time, as well as the wherewithal to see it through. For example, designing a website and setting up a “simple” credit card purchasing option takes days or weeks, and costs more than the $49.95 CustomFlix charge. Blank DVD media isn't all that much less than the $9.95. Best of all, you don't have to worry about glass masters, returns, coasters, bad checks, or bad mail handling.
For very little upfront capital and even less effort, the CustomFlix idea is that you can be in business selling and distributing video content that might otherwise never find an audience. For CustomFlix, it's about solving logistics problems and improving productivity. It's about removing the roadblocks that keep video content and producers from realizing the promise of digital video.
The digital video revolution has been all about making content easier to produce. However, traditional distribution methods — duplication and fulfillment companies, broadcast or cable television, streaming media, etc. — can be as intimidating as the online editing racks of the pre-digital era.
Today, there's certainly nothing tricky about burning and mailing discs; nor is there really anything mysterious once you start working with fulfillment houses. But if you're stuck in between, with too many stamps to lick or too few customers for mass distribution, the last mile can be all uphill. It may not sound glamorous, but actually getting content to an audience — especially a paying audience — really is.
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