Written by 3X West
“She’s aged like a fine wine.” We say that about beautiful mature women all the time… so why not about mature products too!
Y’see, some products (not just in porn but in everyday life too) might peak early, seeing their highest sales when they first are announced. Hype is high, ads for it can be seen everywhere, and word-of-mouth builds anticipation for the product’s release. Generally, though, it’s hard to sustain that customer frenzy forever – eventually, excitement peters out and sales will gradually settle at a slower but steady volume.
Other products, however, might see the inverse curve – starting off small, but building a customer base over time as more consumers start to gravitate toward your product once discovering it (perhaps even long after its launch). These types of products might face an uphill battle towards becoming profitable enough early in their lifecycle, but eventually reach a critical mass of sales to eventually bring a return on your initial investment. Especially for internet content that you can continue to monetize long after it’s been produced, this can mean continuing to generate passive income and new customers months or even years after the product has reached its maturity stage.
This was the case for Age & Beauty, our foray into the market of mature women aged 50 and above (sometimes categorized as “grandmas”, “grannies”, “GILFs”, or similar for all you keyword-heads out there!) As Sex and Relationships Psychologist Natalie Cawley aptly noted, the desire for those in positions of power is deeply ingrained in our psyche, with maturity symbolizing not just age but also wisdom, confidence, and a wealth of life experience.
Defined as a “mature” product in more ways than one, Age & Beauty has aged as gracefully as the gorgeous older women that the series stars. As a limited series with releases spanning 2018-2020, we imagined that interest would plummet once productions ceased. However, unlike some products of ours that often fail to attract or entice potential customers after updates have stopped, we actually saw sales for Age & Beauty continue to trickle in steadily all the way up to present day. (In fact, 2021 was the series’ best sales year – a whole six months after the final release!)
Why this series, and not all those others which seemed to have less sticking power? We believe it’s because of three reasons – the niche appeal, the unparalleled quality, and the star power of the series’ 9 episodes.
Niche Appeal
It may not seem like it due to few other companies trying to produce for this market, but mature content is actually one of the most sought-after categories in the industry. In fact, the main reason we decided to greenlight Age & Beauty back in mid-2018 was because we had been seeing alarmingly high sales numbers for one of our European brands, “Lusty Grandmas”. Despite very little promotion on our end, “Lusty Grandmas” was one of the top-selling lines from the 21Sextury network which housed it, suggesting to us that this was a very underserved category of content. Pornhub’s data also showed a staggering increase in searches for terms like ‘granny,’ ‘GILF,’ and ‘DILF,’ around the time of the series’ inception, with percentages soaring in recent years.
Sure enough, this proved to be the case for Age & Beauty as well. In fact, the biggest contributors to the series’ steady sales has been 3rd-party affiliates such as porn directories, review sites, industry blogs, and tube uploads that have promoted the site to great success. We hear often from these affiliates that the Age & Beauty series has performed above expectations for them, especially because mature content is so scarce – and especially mature content WITH stories and WITH premium production values and WITH recognizable stars and WITH (okay okay, I’m sure you get it by now…)
Which brings me to my next point, which is the brand’s…
Unparalleled Quality
Few, if any, big-name brands in the adult entertainment industry have any content starring women over 50 years old. The mature category has often been relegated to amateur and euro productions, which have their own charm to be sure but don’t scratch the itch for many audiences seeking studio-quality content that suits their preferences. Fans of older women have had to settle for scraps for far too long, and we wanted to treat them to a heaping helping until they couldn’t eat another bite – just like a kindly grandma would!
With tender, nuanced storytelling depicting younger men falling for the breathtaking mature women in their lives, and a sensually soft cinematic quality to underscore the enchanting eroticism of the content, Age & Beauty looks like no other mature product on the market, and that was by design. We wanted to treat the series sensitively, and thus we applied a sensitive aesthetic and even a very delicate-looking logo (reminiscent of the imagery you might see on a greeting card) to show how serious we were about giving mature women the star treatment they deserved.
And speaking of those women…
Recognizable Stars
Our idea from the beginning was to approach prestigious, reputable women in the industry who had slowed down on shooting content in recent times. Some by choice, and others by circumstance, these stars were key players of yesteryears who had stopped gracing our screens for FAR too long!
From mega-stars who were starting to slow down their studio presence like Nina Hartley and Darla Crane, to women who have a devoted fan base grown largely through their self-produced content like Sally D’Angelo and Payton Hall, we aimed to collaborate with only the most seasoned vixens who could bring their years of experience and maturity to their roles. The result was magnetic, captivating us and audiences alike with their powerhouse performances in each and every episode.
It’s a shame that these amazing and talented pornstars often find themselves sidelined in the industry because of their age, which was another reason we made a conscious choice and effort to recruit the best of the best for this project, as a way to rebel against the practice of “aging out” that plagues the entertainment industry.
Not-So-Young Rebels
“Aging out” is a euphemistic term in the biz, which basically means that a performer (almost always a woman) is considered too old to appear in content anymore. Sadly, this is not only a common occurrence in porn, but also one that occurs far too early for these exceptional beauties who still have so many years of vivaciousness and sexual prowess left in them. Women even as early as 35-40 might be told that they’re beginning to “age out”, and find career opportunities start to slim down to only getting typecast as stepmoms and spurned wife cameos, and eventually getting no offered roles at all.
We find this unfortunate attitude in the industry just as demoralizing and demeaning as the stars affected do. To us, the beauty of age is something to be celebrated, not shunned. Age & Beauty was not just a market opportunity for us, it was also a statement piece meant to disprove the notion that these tenacious titans of T&A have lost any of their mojo in their golden years. On the contrary, each and every one of these Golden Gals steals the show with blockbuster performances that raise two middle fingers high and proud in the air to anybody who dared call them too old for porn.
Retired… For Now?
Despite the series being one of our most beloved in our catalog, many practical and logistical hurdles have put an indefinite pause on future productions for the foreseeable future. We already faced challenges with a very shallow and scattered pool of appropriate talent to cast, and this was destabilized even further in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Posing especially high risk to immunocompromised demographics such as the elderly, we knew it would be irresponsible to ask mature performers to put themselves at any added risk. Even as conditions have largely gone back to normal, the production side of the adult industry remains a little more fractured and a little less centralized than it was before, making the reality of producing niche content more complex than ever.
Furthermore, despite all of Age & Beauty’s success we recognize that mature content is quite a niche interest within the larger Adult Time subscriber base. With not much complementary content on the platform to satisfy those who join looking for their fix of mature women, and not much adoption or cross-viewership for mature content by members joining through other sites, the series finds itself in a bit of an awkward position. We have no doubt that if Age & Beauty were its own stand-alone site dedicated to mature content only, it likely would have thrived as a small-scale operation attracting a passionate audience.
Perhaps down the line, circumstances might change and we’ll see an opportunity to pull Age & Beauty out of retirement for another go-around. After all, just like with the subjects of its erotic explorations, there’s still plenty of life and lust in the ol’ gal yet. Our cinematic celebration of life’s second act may have reached its maturity – but as this article has hopefully convinced you, maturity is just the beginning!
Click here to watch a full Age & Beauty scene for free!
