Sausalito company Public Media expands products, adds 3-D screen
[caption id="attachment_23467" align="alignright" width="228" caption="Public Media Works kiosk will feature a 3-D screen and will dispense or download a complete line of electronic media."][/caption]
SAUSALITO – Sausalito is home to a brash startup with plans to place 25,000 to 30,000 "media filling stations" in high-traffic locations over the next few years.
One-year-old, 15-employee Public Media Works (OTCB: PUBM) is competing with Illinois-based DVD vendor “redbox,” the prime DVD dispenser. Public Media believes it can win by broadening the product line and drawing customers with an eye-popping no-glasses 3-D screen, said chairman and CEO Garrett Cecchini.
DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, games, music and all forms of downloadable electronic content will be available to rent or buy at the advanced kiosks, which are being rolled out now at Pizza Huts in Pennsylvania and Florida.
"We're moving the self-service entertainment kiosk into the modern age," said Mr. Cecchini, an attorney, financier and media company entrepreneur who has raised more than $100 million for companies like Compression Science, Debut Broadcasting, Adex and ZVUE.
Venture-financed, publicly owned Public Media Works has already acquired, through a share exchange, EntertainmentXpress, which is developing the kiosks and had signed agreements with Pizza Hut and Popeye's for initial placement at selected franchises.
Through his board members, advisers and his own contacts his company has good access to Hollywood, where most content is produced.
"The highest single expense in this business is content. We wouldn't have gone into it if we didn’t have a pipeline to Hollywood central," he said.
Redbox estimates each of its boxes generates an average of $3,500 a year in DVD rentals and advertising. If Public Media Works reaches its goal of placing 30,000 kiosks within "36 to 40 months," as Mr. Cecchini hopes to do, that's $105 million in revenues.
Sausalito will be the company's headquarters "for the foreseeable future," he said, adding that the talent pool is impressive. Eventual size of the staff could number several hundred, he said.
For more information, visit www.publicmediaworks.com.
