Contributor

Steve Hirsch

Founder, Vivid Entertainment

Steven Hirsch is the founder and co-chairman of Vivid Entertainment, the adult entertainment company he launched in 1984. According to Paul Fishbein, founder of Adult Video News, Mr. Hirsch “single-handedly has moved adult entertainment into the mainstream.” His studio has won more awards than any studio in the history of the adult entertainment business and in 2012 he was honored with AVN’s first Visionary Award.

Vivid Founder/co-chairman Steven Hirsch
From the start Mr. Hirsch differentiated Vivid with sensuous movies that could be enjoyed by couples because of high production values, well-conceived scripts, plotlines, and gorgeous actresses. He created the “Vivid Girl” concept, which revived the Hollywood studio system of signing beautiful and talented stars to exclusive contracts. The faces of Vivid Girls began appearing on billboards in high traffic venues such as Sunset Boulevard and Times Square and he extended the Vivid brand through advertising, product licensing, book publishing and innovative marketing. The company broadened distribution channels and content delivery systems with pioneering technological advances and now has separate imprints such as Vivid-Ed, Vivid-Alt, Vivid SuperXXXHeroes and Vivid-Celeb, the enormously successful concept that has marketed sexually explicit videos “starring” celebrities including Pamela Anderson, Kim Kardashian and Jimi Hendrix.

In recent years Vivid brought adult further into the mainstream via image-building programs such as multiple series on Showtime Cable TV, with appearances on numerous television shows, and Mr. Hirsch has been featured in articles in The New York Times, The Economist, Forbes and many other mainstream news outlets throughout the world. Mr. Hirsch was born May 25, 1961 in Lyndhurst, Ohio.