DVD Wholesale Distributors
DVD wholesale distributors license the DVD distribution rights from the studios that produce the movies and supply DVDs to retail stores, online merchants, DVD rental companies, and mail order stores. DVDs are often made or imported by the wholesalers themselves.
DVDs are sold as packages containing different titles. Action, comedy, drama, family, horror, kids, martial arts, and western are some of the popular DVD genres. They are sold as pre-packaged packages or custom made to order. DVDs often contain additional content that is not available to viewers in movie theaters. These include interviews with the stars, behind-the-scenes action from the film’s sets, and scenes that have been cut from the film. These extras are an added attraction for DVD consumers.
The largest increase in revenue for wholesale DVD distributors is through the sale of video products to retail stores and video rentals. There has been considerable growth in mail order rental over the Internet in the United States. Netflix, which is one of the largest online rental companies, has more than two million customers. The company expects to have about a five percent share of the entire US market by 2006. It distributes about three million DVDs each week.
DVD retailers enjoy a good margin and an increasing number of people are buying DVDs in bulk from a wholesaler and selling them on auction sites like EBay and online stores. Several DVD distributors offer drop shipping and ship the DVDs directly to the end consumer on behalf of the retailer.
Current trends are mail order DVDs over the Internet, digital distribution including providing a movie download service through the distributor’s own broadband infrastructure, game stores, video-on-demand services and pay-per-view services. Video on demand (VOD) systems allow users to view video over a network as part of an interactive television system. Video can be viewed at any time, while a pay-per-view system allows viewers to purchase events for a private broadcast in their homes.