Salon Chats With Kink.com’s Peter Acworth About Their Rebranding Plan

Two weeks ago, we brought you this story about Kink.com founder Peter Acworth's plan to rebrand his site by consolidating and renaming some of its sites to focus more on the fantasy element of their content. The reaction has been relatively, if not overwhelmingly positive, and after some interviews with industry sites like XBIZ, Acworth recently chatted with Salon.com (link below) about the changes to the company.

They discussed a range of topics, but here are some of the highlights...

Tell me about this recent decision to shut down two of your sites.

We’ve essentially stopped shoots on both sites that would have a public audience. That is to say, Bound in Public and Public Disgrace, and we are changing Hardcore Gangbangs to be much more explicitly the fantasy of the female participant. It’s a rebrand. Behind the scenes, these larger scenes with lots of people were quite frankly controlled, but nevertheless they look like they’re not controlled. We’ve been attacked in that manner in the past. It’s difficult to defend, as much as if you would actually speak to the people who were there, or speak to the crew, we could explain how the situation is controlled, but the outside view may be a little more difficult at first view. The mission of the company is to demystify alternative sexuality. Most people are just figuring out what their sexuality is, so we want to open the door to them. If the first thing they see is super-extreme, it doesn’t fulfill our mission as well.

How popular were the sites that you’ve shut down?

Public Disgrace was pretty popular. We had a certain amount of content for it in the can so we’ll continue with it for the next couple months. Bound in Public is less so. They’re also some of the most complicated types of shoots to produce. A lot of staff. You have to prove that everyone’s over 18 so you have to have the ID of everybody. The production and post-production was a lot to deal with. It was a very popular site, but it cost a lot to produce.

Is this shift into a lifestyle brand the future of how porn will be profitable?

I think it’s certainly the right thing to do, being it’s what the mission of the company is all about. I think it is another way to survive this onslaught of free content. The fact of the matter is that video by itself is becoming free. Using that as a platform for the whole lifestyle, where you can buy clothing, all the paraphernalia, and you can do a virtual tour of the building, you can come visit, you come to our events and so on.

You can read the full interview at Salon.com