Hokuto Corporation

DMM.com, formally Hokuto Corporation (株式会社北都, Kabushiki Kaisha Hokuto^?) is a Japanese joint stock company involved in the distribution of adult videos (AV) and adult toys. The firm, founded in March 1990, is headquartered in Tokyo at the Ebisu Garden Place Tower. By late 2008, DMM was handling products from more than 150 different adult video studios, making it one of the largest AV distributors in Japan. The company interfaces with the public for sales and information as Outvision.

As of July 2007 DMM had 185 employees and total assets of 16,618,000,000 yen (about $166 million). Stockholders equity was 6,073,000,000 yen (about $60 million) and company capital amounted to 45 million yen (about $450,000). Sales for the fiscal year ending February 2007 were 28,366,000,000 yen (about $283 million) with sales for the 2008 fiscal year extrapolating to about 30 billion yen (about $300 million). Hokuto had a period of rapid growth from the time of its foundation with sales going from 5.1 billion yen (about $50 million) in fiscal year 2001 to 6.2 billion yen ($60 million) in 2002, 9.8 billion yen ($100 million) in 2003 and 12.3 billion yen ($125 million) in 2004. Under CEO Hiroyuki Shimazaki (島崎啓之), DMM caught up with and surpassed its chief rival in AV sales, the Soft On Demand (SOD) group. Some companies which had formerly been part of SOD, including Dogma, Hajime-Kikaku and Aroma Planning, left SOD to become clients of DMM.

According to the Japanese market research company Teikoku Databank, after this period of rapid growth, there was a sharp drop in sales at DMM, probably due to competition from internet porn sites. From a high of 32.4 billion yen (about $330 million) for fiscal year 2008, income dropped to less than half that amount for the 2010 fiscal year and rival SOD once again became the largest adult conglomerate in Japan.

The DMM Corporation (株式会社デジタルメディアマート or "Digital Media Mart"), incorporated November 1999, which is a major distributor of videos in Japan for both sales and rental and also provides pay-per-view and downloadable digital adult content via its website dmm.co.jp. The director of DMM is Tatsuya Matsue (松栄立也) and the company has a capital of 30 million yen (about $300,000). The DMM website was opened in July 1998 and in September 2011 was ranked #30 in traffic for Japanese sites, #177 in Hong Kong, and #422 globally, with an audience slanted towards middle-aged men.