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February 2006: Company Profile feature on CBC in Northern Ireland, visited 4/01/06. "The Pluck of the Irish".
When asked what CBC Distribution's Unique Selling Point was, owners Davy Christie and Ian Brown were very clear about what sets them apart from their competition in Northern Ireland, and the whole of the island. "We're here. That's what makes us unique. We're the only cash-and-carry wholesaler/distributor in the north, or south."
The CBC name comes from their surnames and an original third partner who turned out to be a bit of a C. When he left the company, Davy and Ian toyed with changing it to Christy-Brown. "Which was the name of the guy in My Left Foot, so that couldn't stay", chuckled Ian. "We thought Cocks, Bollocks and Cunts fitted and was funny. But anyway, the name was out there in the marketplace so it didn't make any sense to change it."
The business is based in Mallusk, Co. Antrim, a town 20 minutes from Belfast and a couple of hours from Dublin by motorway. The gated industrial/retail park the firm is on was chosen partly because it's a discreet location and the rent is, by mainland standards, surprisingly attractive. "We moved into this empty shell unit last April. It used to be a mechanic's workshop so it's been hard work to add a network of offices and a big showroom. Already we're running out of room…"
Davy explained how he'd got involved in an industry which, in Ireland at least, seems to be held in the same high regard as drugs dealing and mugging old women for their pension money. "I'd served my time as a heating engineer and then got fed up with that basically - The whole building site thing. So I started working in a printing company. As a part of that I was looking after the account of someone who worked in the adult industry. Ian was working for that company at the time and it was through him coming into the printers and seeing me that we got to know each other. Always, got on well with him and I had an invite to a party where I got to know him on a personal level. Then I had a motorbike accident and was off work for five or six months-"
Ian cut in, "We were looking for someone to look after distribution, and so we asked Davy and he said yeah. I was looking after the staffing side of that business - It was a very tight team."
Ian used to manage four and five star hotels in NI before making the jump to being a porn baron. "I was working 'til 3, and back up again at 10 o'clock in the morning. My family were growing up and I wasn't seeing them - missing all that sort of stuff. I moved into coffee vending machines. Then I was approached to do a contact mag, which very quickly made more money than the vending coffee, and from that it was a natural progression into the adult shops."
So does that mean CBC a part of a bigger organisation? Ian answered, "No. Us two Paddies is as far as it goes. Fat boy and Slim!"
I asked which is which? After laughing, Davy explained the firm's history. "We started CBC almost four years ago. Our first building wasn't much more than a converted pigsty. We moved up from there to a cowshed and on to here. We've got nearly 3,000 square feet now, but it's already getting to be too small when a big delivery comes in. We could use another 2,000 for when all the pallets arrive. We're thinking about adding an extra floor in the warehouse."
Ian, who looks after the staffing side of the business talked about their team. "Mr R, who looks after the books, is a good man to know when it comes to tax avoidance (not evasion!) as he worked for the revenue for over 20 years and knows all the ins and outs of the system. There's a mystery blonde (I've been asked to not include a name, or even a gender. Attitudes to the industry in Ireland are such that a lot of secrecy is sometimes required, even in a trade magazine) who takes care of a mail order business which we and some mainland firms avail of, which for legal (Liverpool Trading Standards) reasons is actually run out of the Republic. As will an Internet enterprise when we launch it later this year. Then there's Davy's younger brother Darren. AKA Daz - as in squeaky-clean. Every firm needs a Darren."
Davy added, "I source the stock; the lingerie, the toys, dolls, novelties, lubes, condoms - all that sort of stuff. Ian looks after more the DVDs and mags. We split it that way and it works well for us. Not long after starting just as a distributor, a retail opportunity came our way. Now, merchandising our four shops here in north is more my thing again, with Ian on top of the staff. It means we end up playing Good Cop Bad Cop a bit ("Or Bad Cop Bad Cop!", Ian interjected) which I find can be a very hard thing. You want to get on well with the retail staff and keep them happy because happy staff work better in their environment. It can be difficult, at times, to have some degree of friendship but also be able to give a kick in the arse when it's needed."
"I used to use the 'if you cross this line you die' approach", said Ian jokingly (I think) "We've always had a thing - we want to bring them with us. As we do well we want them to do well. Because it means if they're doing well, it comes back to us as well. We say if we're driving something very big, we'd like them to be driving something big. And if we get a very big house, they should have a big house. We've got a key guy called Simon who a lot of people in the industry here know. He looks after our shops for day-to-day things and that works well. He's the manager of our Derry shop and goes out to the others on a weekly basis. It's a very good situation."
Asked about the ever-present risk of 'shrinkage', Ian replied: "There is a danger, in the shops, that after a six month settling-in period when they're all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and excited about working in the adult industry that people can get to feeling they're in a rut and become greedy. Having done everything by the book they might have the confidence to try something. That's not just this industry; it's across the board. Now, having been in the hotel trade for years I can sniff a thief at a hundred miles. I've got a feel for them very quickly and that gets explained to all the shop staff."
Davy picked up, "Ian's gut feeling is always right on that one. The problem is that across Northern Ireland you're dealing with a product that's to some degree illegal, or at least on very shaky ground, and the staff know that. For the same reasons we have to be careful about what paperwork's in the shops as they've been raided in the past. It means we have to have a lot of routines in place that are open to possible exploitation."
Ian added, "Some places in the UK, and I agree with them sometimes, have had the policy of firing their staff every six months before they got too clever and knew how everything works. That rigmarole isn't for us. We can't be training new people every six months. So we've weeded out the dodgys and by treating the shop staff with respect we get the same thing back. Same deal with our customers.
Davy concluded, "If you're paying them good money then hopefully they'll not feel obliged to make up their wages another way. Actually, our staff are great. They're well motivated, and all together what we've got now is a really good team."
On the practical side of things, how does a potential customer open an account with CBC? "We start everyone off on pro-forma invoice to start with", explains Ian, "at least initially. Thereafter provide references from their landlord, bank or current suppliers and that's usually enough to get them 30 days credit terms. The way business is done here, we don't have a minimum order. Because running four shops of our own, we understand the nature of adult retail on the island -lots of shops are quite small- the population and footfall numbers just aren't high enough for us to insist on big orders. We don't expect people to be spending big money with us every week. And that's the key for us. We want them to come up every week, look around the showroom and pick out some new things to try. It's not something you'd see in many wholesalers, our sort of showroom area that actually has the product in surroundings like a shop. It creates the sense of display and looks well, which makes customers think 'if it looks good here it'll look good in my shop'. We even label all the display stock with what we'd expect as a retail price. It's up to them if they follow those or not but mostly customers follow the sort of prices we think things will sell for, as well as what products to carry - again that's an advantage of our experience with our own Bliss branded stores."
"Back to the minimum order issue; the threat of a raid means holding a lot of stock doesn't make great sense for shops. In terms of carriage charges, ideally we want people to come to us. Perhaps they don't look at brochures, but by visiting they'll keep up to date with new products. If someone phones in with an order after Item A, which we've happened to sell out of, we might not get a chance to talk to them about Item B. But if they're here, they'd see Item B and realise that it might satisfy their need just as well and still leave with something."
"We tried something a few years ago. We had this big white van to take stock around to shops, where the owner could just walk in and have a look at what we had. The problem with that was you could never be sure of having the right stock in the limited space of the van to please everyone all the time. It never really worked the way we wanted it to - but you have to try new things in business, don't you? It was a sort of spin-off of what we did when we started CBC. We literally went door to door with a van cold calling to introduce ourselves as CBC to everyone who knew us through the other business we'd been with. In those early days there was something of a stigma because we'd been working for 'the competition'. So when we broke away people said 'You're your man's employees' and we had to explain that we were out on our own. Even now I suppose there's some scepticism here in the north…"
What's the company's philosophy? "Sell like fuck!" Ian went on to explain this radical concept in more depth: "Look, it's a small country. Everyone knows everyone. For us to go from zero to the genuine one-stop-shop we are now in less than four years we know we've been doing something right and because word spreads here, what we're doing right draws more customers to us. We get phone calls at seven o'clock at night and the reply to that customer is going to be Yes. They're saying they're in the shits and they need something got out to them that night and we'll say yes. There's no 'Ah well, I'd like to…no…', the answer's yes. And if we have to drive down to Dublin at twelve at night, it'll be done. Because when we look after someone like that, they'll be coming back to us. That sort of service wouldn't usually come cheap, but with us, it's free. So long as it's a customer who looks after us, there's no delivery charge. Mind, if it's a hundred pounds worth of stock to go to Cork it's a different ball game - people understand diesel isn't free. Though for the regular runs we do down to Dublin a couple of times a week, there's no carriage cost to the customer at all."
Regular runs? Isn't that a risk? "Security is an issue here. There are still paramilitaries who might view this industry as a soft target, and one that hitting won't cause public outrage. So we do change vehicles, when they travel and by what route." Waving a hand towards 7-titles deep racks of films Ian continued, "We also encourage customers up here to see our full range, which takes the potential for hijacking away."
Apart from men with balaclavas, what competition do you have? "There's another firm on the island called Universal Trading who we're friendly with. They deal with ABS while we have links with Scala so we don't tread on each other's toes when it comes to business. And they can deal with us with a much wider range of DVDs than they get elsewhere. Most of our competition actually comes from Europe as without licensing, shops in Eire aren't tied to R18 approved product and can sell whatever they can get their hands on. There was an attitude that 'porn is porn' for many years and people would just buy stock 'by the foot', if you know what I mean. Now the consumer is getting more discerning and shops are looking to stock specific stars, studios and titles. Which is great for us as that's just what we deal in."
Without local council support, how do your shops trade? "The licensing situation in Northern Island is such that we've only got the ones we have through a loophole. I think a memo might have done the rounds as I've had counsellors going on public record to say they're making it possible to process an application specifically so that they can turn that application down. Why the hell would I give them £3,000 to look at an application for an adult shop, knowing it had no chance of being passed? It's a ridiculous situation but even though the vast majority of people are forward-thinking enough and open-minded enough to accept a tastefully presented shop -all ours have etched glass windows and subtle signs- politically no one wants to support us. It's such a hot potato that you'd struggle to find someone in power to even suggest it as a possibility. As it is, there are still raids on some shops here and in the Republic and we'll get a call at eleven o'clock at night saying "We've been raided. We need 600 films by the morning." Davy and Ian both rubbed their hands, probably because it was cold in the warehouse.
What keeps you going, when the official attitude to the industry here seems to be to wrap it up in bureaucracy and hope it goes away? Davy went misty-eyed. "I've got a Thundercat, a 600cc bike that's both a great knee-down thrasher and you can take a pillion passenger (like his partner, who's got over her natural nervousness about going on the back) to ride 200 miles without it getting painful, or cruise over to the TT races. I did a few laps of the course, which was good fun. It's important to have a life away from running your own business, otherwise you can lose sight of what you're running it for."
Ian is less then impressed, "Bikes are horrifically frightening. Davy's got pins in his leg from when he's tried to limbo under cars. I'm more of a car man myself. I had a Mitsubishi GTO - a black one that was very pleasant but with the family that had to go. I needed more seats. But there might be another GTO on the cards. My main hobbies at the moment are working on my house and trying to get the family through school in one piece. At some point, down the line, we hope to have a strong, stable business to sell. We could turn to the big boys and say, look, this is what we've done. This is it. It's beautiful. It's all operational. Pay us to retire and we'll be away. Or, alternatively, we have some very good staff here who could become general managers if we weren't here day-to-day. We've both got other things outside of the adult industry that we're interested in. It'd be great if we had the time to look at those in the future. For a lot of people the adult industry is the means to an end. For me to come from catering, and Davy to come from printing, into a situation where we've got to take councils on head-to-head and all the nightmares which go with that… well, let's just say it's not something my careers guidance teacher would have recommended. We've also taken on a degree of social stigma by being high-profile in a small country so we do have to have the goal of getting out of it at some stage, if only for the sake of our families."
Davy added, "Unless I become a rock star or start playing for Liverpool in the meantime." I suggested he has the hair for either, and quickly followed up with more cheek by asking what ETO had done for them: "Loads of things. It's our contact with the mainland and what's going on in the wider world. It's made us aware of potential suppliers for different, new lines of stock. It's a hotline to what's happening legally in the trade too. It was ETO that put us on to our insurers - we couldn't get insured before that. And it's helped put us on the map here in terms of suppliers in the UK knowing us and what we're doing. They've said 'Would you be interested in taking our products on and distributing them in Ireland', which is thanks to us having a legitimate face to the industry as a whole. ETO's given us credence beyond just being 'The Irish Boys'. It's been very good to us."
Having met Davy at the 'after show party' at the bar in the Hilton after last November's Erotica, I asked if they thought an 'Erotica Belfast' was on the cards. "Ooh, we laughed at that! It'll never happen. You'll never get the population to go to it and there aren't enough people here to support it. There's not even a smaller equivalent here. Nothing whatsoever. Unless we have an open day here that's unlikely to change. Now that's something we've considered. Ben Dover and Omar have both expressed an interest in coming over to do something. Actually, it was at Erotica where we first met Omar face-to-face. Fantastic guy. He sorted me out a couple of tickets to be in the Kop at Anfield. So he's up there with Jesus in my estimation! We were at Erotica to socialise mostly. Have a look about, you know. Again, with that stretch of water between the mainland and us we don't get to see everybody in the way that everyone else can get together. So we see shows as an opportunity to get around the table and have a chat, rather than send emails or be on the phone all the time."
Special deals for February? "People know our prices are very keen anyway, but occasionally we'll be offered a consignment from the UK which means we can afford to do a great price. A part of that deal is usually we'll take it agreeing it'll not be going out of Ireland again. I think we'll be doing something in ETO with that, since it's going into the Republic now. At seven to eleven euros to the trade, we're trying to get people away from copies, with a quality product and the right pricing structure. It's just not worth their while. We can also sometimes offer our better customers a sale-or-return deal on DVDs because we're on their doorstep and can keep track of things better than a supplier on the mainland could."
Tell me more about your range. What's your big seller? Davy: "Branded DVDs…well, it's at least twenty companies we stock, including Omar, Ben Dover, Slik, LTE, Playhouse, Digital Sin (etc. Phone them for details) so something like 700 titles at any given time. Then there are Scala toys, ID Lubes, Mates condoms, Playgirl wear, dolls, various ranges of novelties… Everything really. If someone was to open a new shop in Northern Ireland or the Republic they could drive up here with a van and literally take a whole shop's worth of product away with them. We stock everything except the fittings. Then they could come back the next day and do the same thing. And again, all week. In terms of the toys, our best sellers are still various versions of the Rabbit and we've seen a big upturn in the Playgirl lingerie and uniforms recently."
Ian observed, "This Christmas the ToyJoy remote controlled egg went really really well. We've had visions about this actually. One particular shop was selling dozens of them and we can just see some guy walking into a bar and pressing the button and five women all jumping up out of their seats! Another big Christmas line was the candy underwear. God almighty! The wee sweety things, you know, like the necklaces. They were selling in High Street shops as a fun gift line. A real crossover product, and we're still selling out of them running up to Valentine's. A wee bit naughty but not, you know… We did have a DVD over here from Rude Britannia called Fucked in Ireland with 'Teaching the Paddies how to fuck' on the back of it. For some reason that wasn't a big seller…"
That's a lot of stock to manage. Do you use an EPOS system? Ian: "We don't need an EPOS system, we've got a Darren. He's the picker, the packer and the invoice generator… He knows what everything is, which shelf it's on, how many there are of them and when more are due in. This is why everyone should have a Darren. We took him on when Davy had crashed his bike (again!) and we needed some extra help and he's been a brilliant addition to the business."
What about the future for CBC? "What we did in the old days is what we do now, to some degree. We're still making calls and taking the van out. There's something like forty shops trading in the south, and we're currently doing business with less than half of them. We've talked about looking to the mainland to expand our business, but while there are people here who buy exclusively from the UK or further-a-field and aren't customers of ours, we feel there's still work to be done here in Ireland. We're very open to new opportunities and will try things, like the online plan. We used to produce a top-shelf magazine called Esprit that doubled its circulation month on month to the point. What we'd not worked out was that it takes a lot of money to be publishers and unfortunately for us we weren't in the position to fund it at the time. But it might be something we revisit in the future. For now we're looking to consolidate what we've got, reach some more people who don't know who we are or what we do - who don't readily know that we're here. Our long-term view has to be getting the legal situation for hardcore in Ireland sorted out so we don't have to dance about to keep out of trouble."
CBC Distribution
Mallusk
Co. Antrim. NI.
(They've asked for their full address to be withheld)
Phone 02890 849007
Fax 02890 849 222
Email cbc/no-spam/ni@hotmail.com