An Open Letter : Grooby in 2013 and ongoing ...
2013 was one of the most successful years (if not the best) we’ve experienced at Grooby in the more than 17 yrs we’ve been operating our company and we’re entering 2014 with an extremely positive outlook on what we can accomplish in the coming years.
How do I measure success?
Financially, we had a good year with more people joining (or rejoining), taking advantage of our discounts or offers and we’ve a higher ratio of people staying members for multiple months than almost any other adult website company. This has given us the budgets to spend on improving our technology from the cameras through to a recent upgrade on the servers and the ability to work on developing new projects in the coming months.
We have the most successful group of producers and employees ever. Producers who have been with us for a long time have developed & improved their styles but the new producers have brought some much needed fresh perspectives to what we do. Our customer service is second to none and some tweaking around with our support staff means that I believe everyone are both challenged and enjoy what they do.
The Tranny Awards in 2013, was a big success for us. Something which I was determined to grow slowly, came of age on that February night when sponsors and guests turned up to see a great looking venue promoting our industry and (almost) every tgirl model turned up, not so much in their usual sexy club gear but in dresses and gowns – looking classy and fabulous. This is a show to honour the models in our industry more than anything else and if we can continue in the same spirit this Feb. I can only see this brand grow and become more inclusive.
The influx of new models in 2013 has been incredible and somewhat over-whelming. About half-way through the year I realized there hadn’t been one big break-out star as in previous years but just a steady stream of incredible looking girls, wanting to work for our sites. I get between 3-10 model applications a day and over the past decade the changes in progress of models transitions, getting earlier and better is incredible and I know Grooby and Shemale Yum has a lot of responsibility in encouraging girls who may not otherwise have came out, to do so. The downside, is that even though we produce almost 200 scenes a month, we simply can’t get as many girls shoots or re-shoots with the regularity that we’d like.
Our largest success though, is our members – both pay sites members and the extended family through our social networks and forums. Without the budgets, we wouldn’t be able to do anything. We wouldn’t be able to produce the material we want, we wouldn’t be able to put on shows, we wouldn’t be able to run free networks and we wouldn’t have the fun we do have, running a company like Grooby. We wouldn’t be able to dream of what the future might hold for all of us.
Before I talk about what we have coming in 2014, I’d like to thank all of you, from all of us, for your support, your patience, your feedback, your patronage, your requests, your promotion, your likes and your shares. Together we’ve started down the path to normalizing tgirls in erotica as well as in life and I invite you all, to join me as we turn that path into a highway before launching into space.
So what is in store for 2014?
Perhaps some dreams – and perhaps some reality.
We have a site that should launch in the coming months which will appeal to some but not all. I’m working on bringing in new photographers from Indonesia, South Africa and Europe. I’d like to see another country-centric website like the great job Kevin Dong is doing on Canadian-Tgirls.com or Hiro on ShemaleJapan.com. I’d like to see what ideas our current producers want to do this year – whether in specific scenes or DVD’s – or wider projects. I’d like to reach out to countries which have problems either in viewing our material – or promoting the girls that live there but have no outlet. These are realistic sites or ideas which may (or may not) come to fruition.
How about we reach a little further?
How about we look at ways to “sponsor” or help girls develop their transitions through support, advice and surgery? How about we encourage even more tgirls to come out – and how about we look at ways to normalize them even further within our society. How about we investigate why so many models have such problems with finance and see if we can do something to help them manage that? Why don’t we look at why so many tgirls have psychological issues – depression and suicidal – and is there anything we can do to try and help them?
Grooby is a brand. It’s a growing brand – from the nucleus of putting some scanned photos on a simple html site, we’ve grown into a whole lot more. Maybe these ideas are far-fetched, maybe they’ll spark an idea in someone reading this – or just maybe, with a little help and a lot of work, we’ll get some of them done.
What is for sure as we enter our 18th year, we’ve a long way to go before we’re finished.
A happy and healthy New Year to you all.
Steven Grooby
7th Jan 2014
