These are exciting times for Totem Entertainment.
Richard Excoffier, aka Rex who co-founded the company, told XBIZ World in this interview that the company is rolling out a new generation of products featuring girls in 4K Ultra HD that will transform the VirtuaGirl brand.
iStripper is the fourth generation of our product. Each generation has brought its share of better resolution and clever services to the customer.
And Excoffier said there will be a name change, as well. VirtuaGirl will now be known as iStripper.
Excoffier noted that the company needed a new name that is closer to the product’s core and to trigger new interest with users who saw it years ago.
Excoffier sat down with XBIZ World to discuss the new world of desktop strippers with iStripper, what’s coming ahead for TotemCash and more.
XBIZ: Tell us about how you entered adult and how you got the idea for desktop strippers?
Excoffier: The desktop strippers concept dates back to 1998 when after 15 years developing video games Hervé Lucchi and myself came up with the idea of mixing the best parts of video games with adult online entertainment — two extremely competitive and dynamic industries.
Back in 1998 there were absolutely no online videos, the best you could get was a stamp-sized bunch of moving pixels if you had a fast PC. But because we knew in advance the characteristics of the content, we’ve been able to compress it enough to crank it on a floppy disk and the desktop dancer came to life. It was really impressive back then, and we did our first sale a few hours after putting the product online.
Since then, we have rolled out three generations of VirtuaGirl, released over 1,000 models in 5,000 sets, and we keep releasing new content every single day.
XBIZ: Why did you decide to change the name after so many years?
Excoffier: The VirtuaGirl name had aged. It became the well-known name of a product from the early 2000s, featuring tiny girls on your screen. The very meaning of «Virtua » is changing rapidly with all the VR craze.
The new generation of our product features girls in 4K Ultra HD on your screen and has nothing virtual. So we needed a new name, closer to the product’s core, to reflect the change and trigger new interest in users who saw it years ago.
The new name is iStripper.
XBIZ: What is required for producing each girl?
Excoffier: In a nutshell, good content and a blue screen. We’re running a studio in Paris where we film eastern European girls mostly and another studio in Las Vegas where we film all the American girls.
We shoot 15 days per month on average. Both studios feature a large blue screen background and a 4K camera. Filming in 4K creates so much data that we’re buying 4 terabyte hard drives by the dozen each month. We have so many drives now that storage has become a serious problem.
We then have an extensive post-production process mixing public and proprietary software. Content is then added to our databases and synchronized to our servers and made available to our customers. iStripper downloads content directly from our servers or through P2P between users to reduce the load.
XBIZ: Who are your most downloaded VirtuaGirls to date?
Excoffier: Viola, Jillian Janson, Sapphira A, Ariana Marie, Nekane, Lucy Li, Mery Pie, Alexa Tomas, Skin Diamond, Abby Cross, Paula Shy are among the best selling girls we have. We recently had the chance to work with Russian marvel Katya Clover and a splendid Latina from Spain Nekane.
Thanks to our new studio in Las Vegas opened a year ago, we’ve been able to renew our content with U.S. stars for iStripper.
We allow members to rate and comment on each girl. We have a large community of aficionados collecting all the models. They go crazy over them and buy most of the new content we release each week. Seeing members with collection exceeding 2,000 girls is incredibly common.
XBIZ: Tell us about TotemCash, how instrumental has it been for VirtuaGirl’s success?
Excoffier: We spent 1998 to 2003 keeping the product for ourselves and it was turning any traffic we’d buy into gold. In 2002 we realized that no matter how big our media buyers team would become, nothing would beat thousands of highly motivated affiliates. TotemCash opened in 2003, and we quadrupled our turnover that year. It has been going pretty steady ever since, we’ve been very lucky not to be affected by the tube craze, as our content does not make sense outside of our software.
XBIZ: Aside from offering a one-of-a-kind product, what are some of TotemCash’s standout features?
Excoffier: We have revamped TotemCash for the launch of iStripper. Beside the beautiful new look and feel, the main new key feature is a pay-per-install offer. That’s a big change for us as TotemCash has always been revshare only. As much as we know our product pays in the long run, but we also wanted to offer upfront money to affiliates.
XBIZ: How has your product evolved over the years?
Excoffier: iStripper is the fourth generation of our product. Each generation has brought its share of better resolution and clever services to the customer. One of the biggest changes to VirtuaGirl HD in 2007 was when we switched from membership to pay per girl. Profits rose 30 percent, and we never looked back.
Besides its new name and its fast and modern new interface, iStripper features P2P downloads, multiple girls at once on your screen and a collection of over 2,000 girls/outfits in 4K. You need to see girls in 4K on a big screen to realize what it is about. Because we don’t store any background in our videos, all the bandwidth is used for the model itself and the results are mesmerizing.
XBIZ: What’s next?
Excoffier: Although we’re focusing on the launch of iStripper right now, as it has been over two years in the making, we’ve also been working on another product called iDancer. It’s based on the same desktop technology, but it’s aimed at a mainstream audience. It features girls dancing in rhythm with the music you’re listening on your computer. Girls are sexy of course but it’s all about dancing; no nudity at all. It will be released this summer.
XBIZ: In your time away from work, what do you like to do?
Excoffier: I’m a citizen of the world. I travel all the time. I’m keen on moto raids, extreme climbing and other adventures where I have the chance to excel myself. I also participate in many projects with friends and partners. I’m always attracted to new ideas, new concepts and new experiences. Other than that, I guess my French roots are responsible for my passion for good wine, refined food and modern art and design.