Mention adult movies, and this is probably the scene one would imagine: A person, most often a man, in disguise renting porn on a Friday night. Many have seen, but few have entered adult video stores, which blossomed during the 1980s, as VCRs allowed people to view the movies in the privacy and comfort of their own home.

Enter Anh Tran, 27, and Danny Ting, 28, two former consultants who worked for the now defunct Arthur Andersen firm. The two entrepreneurs are literally helping to change the way people look at adult movies.

The pair are founders of Wantedlist.com, an online adult DVD rental store modeled after Netflix.com, an online DVD site. Launched in August 2001, Wantedlist offers consumers a site – pop-ups not included – with which to browse and rent from a collection of more than 8,000 adult DVDs. Subscribers can choose from several payment plans, and with free shipping, no due dates or late fees and the flexibility to drop them into a mailbox when finished, Wantedlist has been placed on many customers’ most wanted and must-have lists.

Sitting at a Chinatown restaurant in San Francisco, Tran appears younger than his age, sporting spiked, tousled hair and donning an un-tucked shirt. A self-proclaimed foodie, Tran digs into his dish of glistening beef with a smile of satisfaction.

It’s the same smile that appears on Tran’s face when he speaks of Wantedlist, a dream that came true over a bowl of noodles.

“Everything happens over noodles,” Tran says laughing. “We were eating noodles at this hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant, and Danny asks me if I’d ever heard of a company called Netflix. At that point, we pointed to one another excitedly, and we knew then that we were both thinking about a ‘Netflix for porn,’ and our adventure began.”

Born in Hue, Vietnam, Tran and his family were boat people, escaping the communists and arriving in the United States when he was 4 years old. Along with his younger brother and sister, Tran grew up in Stockton, Calif., and attended UCLA, where he majored in Asian American studies. From there, he worked at Siebel before going to Andersen, working as a technology strategy consultant. It was at Andersen that he met Ting.

Ting was born in Taiwan and immigrated with his family to the United States when he was 2 years old. He grew up in an affluent suburb in New Jersey, and attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, where he received a degree in industrial management. He graduated in 1997, and worked for Oracle and then Arthur Andersen.

“Anh and I couldn’t have started Wantedlist at a better time, we left just before the whole debacle at Andersen,” Ting says.

The two met while working on a project in Santa Clara and instantly clicked. They share a sense of humor and a savvy for business. With a budding urge to become their own bosses, the two left six-figure salaries and focused their efforts and investments into an adult DVD rental company.

“People actually doubted us when we were conceptualizing Wantedlist and starting this online business during the whole dot-com fallout,” Tran says. “For many, it seemed like a bad idea to start a business in a slow economy.”

Setting out to revolutionize the way people access adult movies, the two launched the site, and thousands have discovered Wantedlist, transforming Tran and Ting’s idea into a multi-million dollar business.

“This was a business decision I made, going into Wantedlist,” says Ting. “It wasn’t so I could hang out with porn stars at the Playboy mansion. We knew that there was a market for this, especially the anonymity factor and the convenience. I didn’t want to work for somebody else all my life. So we decided to take a chance.”

Tran says the company’s Los Angeles office looks more like an ascetic warehouse than an adult DVD company.

“We’re not producers, directors or makers of adult films, and there are no adult movie posters or pictures in our offices,” Tran says. “I’m doing this because of my entrepreneurial spirit and it’s a very lucrative business.”

In 2000, 11,041 adult video titles hit the market, compared with just 1,275 a little more than a decade ago, according to Adult Video News. In Hollywood, an average of 400 feature films are released each year. U.S. News and World Report reported in 2000 that pornography was an $8 billion industry in 1999, raking in more revenue than those generated by rock and country albums, and more than Americans spent on Broadway productions, theater, ballet and jazz and classical music shows combined.

The latest figures show that the adult video industry generates $57 billion worldwide and $12 billion in the United States, topping the revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises, according to industry analysts at Forrester.

“In economic terms, sex is considered highly inelastic: the price can be raised and demand won’t fall,” says Tran.

With Wantedlist, those wanting to watch adult movies don’t have to face the embarrassment when checking out of a hotel or bringing the video to the cashier at the corner video store.

With a computer and an Internet connection, customers can choose from plans that offer up to eight movies at one time. Wantedlist offers plans such as “The Rock Star” for six DVDs at $34.95 and “The Porn Star” for eight DVDs at $42.95. Wantedlist offers almost every DVD under the sun, catering to straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender audiences.

And now with a new feature called Pornotron 6900, customers can select genres easier and quicker with less of headache of having to go through all the movies.

The site has everything from the adult movie industry, including anime, Asian, educational and stripping themes. The most popular choices are educational (for couples wanting to enhance their sex life) and Gonzo DVDs, according to Tran and Ting.

“Gonzo is a fairly new genre in the adult film world,” says Ting. “Whereas the performers in the old adult movies acted, or try to act, Gonzo performers recognized they’re being filmed and interact with the camera.”

Customers have the choice of renting or buying DVDs, which come in discreet packaging, and once they’ve finished the movies, they can drop them off at any mailbox.

Sandy, who requested her last name not be used for this article, is a 28-year-old Chinese American woman. She has a degree in business, and works as an international coordinator for a retail apparel company. She is happily married, has one child and watches pornography.

“I enjoy watching porn because it helps spice up my love life,” she says. “I usually enjoy watching straight porn, preferably with attractive men and women, and occasionally the ‘girl on girl’ action. I also like to watch Japanese anime because they typically have good story lines.”

For many Asian Pacific Americans, especially women, watching porn may make a person feel ashamed or embarrassed, says Sandy. “However, ‘rough’ sex is something completely different and that I do not like to watch.”

Tran and Ting said they make sure that all the videos they distribute are legally produced and legitimate. The site does offer bondage and S&M videos, but none that are extreme and present life-threatening scenes.

Wantedlist does not carry child pornography or bestiality pornography, which are both illegal, and Tran says their movies come from production companies and studios that don’t feature under-aged performers.

Wantedlist even prohibits shipping to certain states because of city and county laws on pornography.

Neither Tran nor Ting’s families know about their sons’ business yet. Although they put in upwards of 80 hours a week into their business, they still love every minute and have fun every minute.

“Here we are, two guys in a noodle shop with ideas scribbled on a napkin to a warehouse with 30 employees,” says Tran. “That’s pretty amazing. It’s the American dream.”