Porn Valley- Rob Ragan is a stand up guy. I know. I voted for him when he ran for president against Jimmy Carter. Okay that’s a different Reagan. Rob Ragan, who bears little likeness to any American president living or dead, began his career in the adult business in 1986 when he went to work for Western Visuals and Elliot Segal. [Bill Falcon, the other principal in the company, is supposedly off in Mexico somewhere living the life of Riley.]

Ragan, whose main job these days is handling the White Tiger label, started out as a “collector”. As in collecting money. I asked him if that entailed baseball bats and 400-pound Samoans. The way Ragan tells it, it never came to that.

The way Ragan also tells it Robert Hill/White Tiger got through the industry’s long hot Summer with barely using an air conditioner. And there’s a couple of obvious reasons for that, one of which is the fact that they’re standard bearers of niche product- gay lines and transsexual features whose audience is incredibly loyal, albeit demanding. Ragan handles the sales for White Tiger, www.whitetigerreleasing.com, exclusively and some accounts on the Robert Hill side.

“When I first went to work for Western, Elliot actually hired me for collections,” Ragan laughs. “But I didn’t walk around with a baseball or gun or anything. We used to call it GTFM- get the fuckin’ money. We didn’t have the stereotype of the collector. That wasn’t the case back then. Then you didn’t have 7,000 titles to chose from. There was only a handful of production studios [such as Essex, Caballero, Western Visuals, Cinderella, Vidco, Arrow, VCX] and quite frankly we couldn’t put it out quick enough to fill the demand.”

“Back then it wasn’t like you gave somebody 2,000 pieces on a new release and said pay me whenever,” Ragan goes on to say. “You gave them the product, you got paid or you worked out terms and got paid. Now you give someone a Net 30 and that translates to Net 90. You give someone a Net 90 and that translates to a Net Never. There’s a lot of companies that do that and you got to pick and choose your battles.”

Ragan will also tell you that today’s adult market is more business oriented. Whereas when he first got in, it was more of a game for everybody.

“There wasn’t a lot of competition,” he states. “It was attractive to people because it wasn’t like every Tom, Dick and Harry had a hand-held video camera. This was before the video camera age. Now you can take digital pictures on a camera [or phone] and put those up on a website and charge people money to look at them. Back then you had to have quite a bit of dollars to buy the right equipment. Now I can in Costco and buy a video camera for cheap- I’m a director. Unfortunately that’s what it comes down to.”

While Ragan’s thoroughly enjoyed his time in the business, he never wanted to get caught up in its hoopla. That’s why you probably rarely saw him being quoted in the adult press until White Tiger got started.

“I watched a very powerful man in this business basically smoke [crack] himself out of it,” states Ragan, recalling Segal. “To tell you the truth, things like that frighten me. I saw Elliot go from being one of the most powerful men in the adult industry to basically being run out of it. I watched him do it and there was nothing we could do. Sadly, it led to his demise and it was time for him to move on and for all of us to do our own separate deals. And that’s what we did.”So I ask Ragan the million dollar question: how’s business.

“It was a good year for White Tiger and Robert Hill, www.roberthillreleasing.com” is Ragan’s assessment.. “White Tiger started, theoretically on the first of May.”

White Tiger is a broker which handles high end gay films in the wholesale market.

“I am a studio representative,” says Ragan. “I don’t have anything to do with productions or post production. I wouldn’t know the first thing about shooting a film- straight, gay or tranny.”

“The gay side of the industry, then, is pretty strong, then?”

“The gay side of the industry is both strong and steady at this point,” Ragan answers. “You figure for every 300 releases they come out with in the straight market every week, there may be 30-40 releases in gay.”

I ask Ragan if there’s a possibility of the Costco shooters coming in and doing what they did on the straight side.”It’s inevitable for all business to experience saturation in one form or another,” says Ragan. “Right now we’re seeing straight companies, straight directors trying to shoot gay film because the margin is still there in the gay, where in the straight I’m not saying you can’t make money, it’s so much more difficult. There’s so much good product out there. And I really take my hat off to guys who run their companies like businesses- they get out there. They aren’t hypnotized by who they are or their status in the industry- guys like Steve Volponi over at Devils, www.devilsfilm.com, Greg over at Zero Tolerance, Craig over at Nectar or Joey Wilson over at Third Degree. These are guys that aren’t just sitting in their offices taking calls. They’re out there beating the snakes out of the bushes and doing what they can to keep their companies successful. That’s what it takes now. You can have five hot blonds doing a shoot for you, but you got to go out there and promote it, sell it and do the right thing.”

I also ask Ragan about the school of thought which suggests that beating the snakes out of the bush might not help the new companies trying to make a dent in the adult market because of the over-saturation.

“Let’s say you go in a store and purchase milk and you see a new brand of milk next to the same one you’ve been drinking for the next ten years,” Ragan states. “Are you going to be willing to try a new brand of something? Or are you going to stick with what you know is right. But what if the brand you’ve been drinking was sour a couple of times you bought it. Or maybe you’ve seen this new brand in so many different places and you’ve heard so many good things, maybe you’ll try it. That’s the normal thing.

“But this is porn. This ain’t IBM. We make our living off people that want to look at film, look at television and want to jerk off. For myself, when I walk into a video industry, for me to rent a B movie or something I know little about, it’s almost impossible. To get me to go to a movie theater is even harder. But you know what? Rocky Balboa comes out this week. I’m going to be there for the premiere in the movie theater. I love the Rocky movies. I know what to expect. When you know what to expect it’s comfort. Change is scary to a lot of people. And when you go to a market that has your usual suspects- Evil Angel, Anabolic, Red Light, Hustler- you know when you put it on the shelf it’s going to move.”

According to Ragan, in the gay market, consumers are looking for new product all the time.

“There’s not a saturation,” he says. “Just like in the old days on the mainstream side- there wasn’t a saturation. When we put a new title out for Western Visuals, the customers couldn’t wait to put their hands on it. Now you’ve got to put out 8 titles a month and keep in their face constantly to have the cash flow to survive. You got to have the titles; you got to have the talent. you’ve got to go to the shows. All that costs money- to put out advertising to let people know that you exist. Because one thing’s for sure, you go three months without advertising, you know what’s going to happen? You’re going to be out of business.”

Ragan also feels that the Robert Hill line is successful because the company doesn’t cheat on anything.

“They pay top dollar for everything- from the director to the editors to the authors to the replication to the artwork, then turn around and charge the absolute, fairest price for the quality of product available on the market. That’s why Robert Hill is successful.”

“It’s consistency,” Ragan adds. From his ongoing observations, Ragan notes how the major clientele for tranny films are straight people.

“It blew my mind to learn this,” he says. “Guys walking in, very well known in their community want a tranny movie and Robert Hill gives the consumer more to look at and more to enjoy. That’s why it works. Robert Hill doesn’t cheat its customers. You get Robert Hill product, you’re getting a damn good product for a damn good price and that’s just cut and dry.”

“White Tiger for now is a small company,” Ragan goes on to say. “Robert Hill not so much. It’s very well known, very large and a world-wide company.” And Ragan personally abides by the Honest Abe philosophy as well.

“I sleep at night, knowing my family’s taken care of,” he says. “I don’t need to be king-shit. I don’t need to be king of the gay world. I don’t need to make a million dollars a year. My name has never really come up until I started White Tiger. That’s when I started allowing my name to get printed in the press. I’m not a porn guy. But this is our deal- we’re here to put as much as we possibly can out the door without having to fuck anybody over to do it. There’s nothing more irritating. Get yourself in a position where you’re the primary source on as much shit as you can do and still do it efficiently. As much product that’s available, this is a small industry. It’s a tight industry. One of us can’t fart without somebody in North Hollywood hearing it. If we were to give Robert Hill for $8 to anybody in this country, you know how quickly that phone would ring with fifty distributors infuriated? If I were to sell anything of my White Tiger for less than the asking price, you don’t think my phone would ring? We don’t do that.

“Don’t hurt anybody,” Ragan advises. “Don’t fuck anybody to do it. Keep your word and don’t steal anything and you’ll be in this business as long as there’s an adult industry.”