Today is WSM's Birthday! WSM celebrates 34 years of continuous trading We are the oldest WAM business in the world!
When did WSM Productions commence? It started under the name of WET SHOTS just selling slide sets. John Swindail from Stoke-on-Trent and Mike Ellison entered into a partnership from 1st October 1981. The first retail sale of 63.03 was banked 3rd December 1981 at Barclays Bank, 36 Town Road, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. And did the world embrace this new concept of slide images? With sales of 6,170 to 30th September 1982, in a world without any internetI would say they did! So our birth date is 3rd December 1981. By 1984 we had changed our name to WSM Productions. And today sees 34 continuous years of trading for WSM Productions.
Our first movie started filming 18th August 1985. The result was the first commercially produced WAM video. This was 'The Hopeful Starlet'which is still available in the 'Online Store' under Digital Download Vintage Films (Vintage Film 1). You wish to know how the WAM movie business commenced? Well here it is!
WSM Productions has changed over the last 12 months moving from a Subscription based website to a Download website. Why did that happen. Customers indicated their choice for Downloads rather than Subscriptions. Crazy to me (Mike Ellison), but figures represent reality and the Subscription site did go into decline. The change from Subscription to Downloads was followed by the sale of the business in July 2015. Mike Ellison still writes this weekly column because he enjoys it and also needs to eliminate debt. But in case you wonder what may happen should Mike Ellison be unable to continue, a writing successor has already been named to our principal.
We took stock recently and have: 36 WSM movies unpublished 2 Vintage WSM movies unpublished 1 WSM XXX movie unpublished. In addition we have a commitment to process and publish: Approx 33 Custard Couple (CC) movies Approx 10 CC XXX movies So does that answer your question about our future? And who else bothers to publish a forward program of 6 weeks? But we are only as good as our customer orders.
WSM Productions has been preserved for posterity. Being available is one thing. Being in demand and receiving orders is quite another.
But today to celebrate our 34th Birthday, we publish a selection of Before and After shots from our published sets, naturally in the order of W,S then M. Enjoy!
See our next Update Saturday 5th December for image set numbers plus relevant movie numbers.
Love you, too
xx
