ABS Holdings: a distributor of adult goods for Britain

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Tell me about your company and the products you are presenting here, please.

The company’s name is ABS Holdings, we distribute in England, we have got agents of different brands currently working on our booth. The complete list of our brands is about 50 items, we have 2000 different names within our range, including some brands of our own: Kinx, Minx, Linx making baseline sex toys of initial level within the low-cost price range. On this exhibition we plan to reach a number of goals. The latest ETO exhibition was held in 2016, then there was a break for two years, that’s why we are here with quite a big booth and our current approach as for the marketing policy is very serious. We need to show the whole list of the novelties that have joined the product range since the latest exhibition took place, to underline some particular items we want to promote, to have a talk with our clients, to get aware of the situation on market and apart from talking about buying and selling to discuss some marketing ideas that seem much more interesting.

What brands are you representing here? Bathmate, Nexus…

We are showing Oxballs, Doc Johnson right here, then we have Satisfyer and Pipedream on this side and Exjem products on the other one. The latter includes several brands: BodyWand, Zolo, RabbitCompany, Wicked, Nexus, Liberator, Bathmate, leWAND and b-Vibe. Right behind me you can see our brands – Kinx, Mins, Linx and a limited range meant for the gay segment-Prowler. Prowler is a rather popular franchise that is currently well-known within the gay environment in England. In 2017 and 2018 ABS Holdings acquired a number of retail stores under the name Prowler and had this name registered as a brand. Nowadays, using the ABS Holdings capacity, we are developing the range by Prawler.

What do you expect to get out of this show?

Our expectations are quite small as the ETO show has just re-emerged after a few years of time-out, the forecast is not clear. In 2016 the exhibition was twice bigger than today, I think. It is small and cozy yet pretty busy.

In general, the impression is very positive. The experience we had at some recent exhibitions, including eroFame, the biggest European show, says there is no foundation either for me or for the company to expect making million-dollar-deals on sales or purchase here. One shouldn’t expect this kind of activity on the exhibitions. These are events of different perspective and if one’s expectations are reasonable, one can define the appropriate amount of marketing budget. One should chase the right goals.

Part of the brands represented on your booth are sold in Russia, they are well-known and popular. Do you plan to promote your brands for Russia?

We are currently not cooperating with any Russian distributor. We supply our products to several retail shops, but it is not about one single partner. When I started working for ABS, there was an idea among the managers to find one single distributor and work with it. The trouble is: if we divide our range into two subcategories-the brands of our own and the outside brands-it comes out that the outside brands must have already got their own distributors in Russia.

As for our own brands, the situation is also rather awkward: they are all manufactured at the same Chinese factories. Our range was shaped according to what had been historically demanded in England and Western Europe, so we included these products in our stock. In Russia, the wholesale representatives are likely to order items that may differ due to the specific nature of market or region. That’s why we haven’t established any partnership with wholesalers in particular. Nevertheless, as for the retail area, the situation is opposite. The reason is that a retail store finds it more beneficial to engage a brand that will differ from what is sold elsewhere. When it comes to something new, of low cost, it is easy to sell. There is no big science in it: we do our best to let people go on selling these goods. Some of the companies do small wholesale business as well, they push our brands throughout their regions and we feel satisfied with this outcome. We certainly would like to have greater coverage, as for now, we are limited by Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and some million-person cities. I am a Russian citizen, I am conscious of the fact that apart from Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, there are lots of sites with stores having a good turnover, that are serious market players, so it would be nice to start some sort of cooperation with them too.

Would you like to add something?

For those who may read these lines, I want to stress once again that among the ABS Holdings’ employees there is a Russian-speaking person Pavel Zalevskiy, the delivery channels are also open. The delivery process is never ok with logistics but in our company it is free of troubles of any sort. With this regard, you are welcome to cooperate!