Goodtimes entertainment7/5/2023 From the beginning, GoodTimes opted to control its tape duplication, rather than rely on third parties and take a chance of missing deadlines or providing poor quality products to its customers. With a steady customer in hand, GoodTimes then invested $18 million to create a tape duplicating plant in New Jersey, which would ultimately grow into an operation capable of producing 150,000 tapes a day, and double that amount if necessary. In the end, Cayre left town with a $1 million order from Wal-Mart. Moreover, a wholesale price of $7 per tape meant that Wal-Mart stood to realize a healthy profit. To back up his claim, he offered to pay for shipping, including return freight on unsold product, as well as purchasing choice shelf space at the front of the store. Wal-Mart buyers were impressed by the low-priced videos but skeptical about Caryre's claim that Wal-Mart would be able to sell $10 million of the product in the first year. As important as this initial sale was, it would pale in comparison to a relationship GoodTimes forged with retail giant Wal-Mart when Joe Cayre visited its Arkansas headquarters in 1984. Retailers were so impressed that GoodTimes sold 5,000 prepacks. The company unveiled its titles at the Consumer Electronics Show in a prepack with each tape priced for consumers at $14.95. In 1984, the Cayre brothers created GoodTimes Home Video with a list of 25 public domain movies to which they purchased the masters, then made copies. The only way to satisfy that market was to turn to public domain titles, movies on which the copyright had lapsed and no royalties were due. Visits to video stores revealed to the Cayres that customers would be attracted to a price point in the $10 range. In the early 1980s, VCRs were just beginning to make serious inroads with consumers, and movies available for sale on video were priced extremely high, from $40 to $90. The brothers chose the latter, since the video business was more in keeping with their experience in records. Joe Cayre then began searching for a new business for the family, narrowing down the possibilities to cell phones and videos. That development, along with a general malaise in the record industry, led the Cayre brothers in 1979 to sell most of their catalog to their distributor, RCA, for $100 million. The majors eventually took notice and entered the market. Over the next several years, helped in large part by staging concerts of imported Latin stars, SalSoul gained a 70 percent share of the Latin record business, issuing eight to ten records each month and generating nearly $50 million in annual revenues. Because of their Miami background, the brothers had a better sense of the popularity of Latin music than the major record labels. Rather than attend college, the Cayre brothers went into business together and moved to New York, where in 1969 they started a record label, SalSoul Records, which licensed and distributed Latin music. Their father was a small-time businessman, who during the 1940s sold whiskey and cigarettes on a Caribbean pleasure boat, then later owned a souvenir shop in Miami Beach. The founders of GoodTimes are brothers Kenneth Cayre, Joseph Cayre, and Stanley Cayre, the offspring of Syrian immigrants. In recent years, GoodTimes has sought to find niche video markets, becoming heavily involved in Christian product as well as Broadway shows. The company has also sought to branch out into a wide range of tie-in products connected to celebrities such as Richard Simmons and Naomi Judd. Since its foundation in 1984, the company has constantly adapted to changing conditions: reliance on inexpensive public domain movies gave way to the development of fitness videos, then original animation and live action features, a foray into book publishing, and eventually a video game software distribution operation that resulted in the spin-off of GoodTimes Interactive. is primarily a video distributor, producing many of its own titles while also acquiring programming from third parties. Operating out of New York, GoodTimes Entertainment Ltd.
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