Giorgio Tacchia is the Founder, President and CEO of the CHILI. CHILI is an European digital entertainment player. In August 2017 CHILI launched the only Entertainment Centred Marketplace. A transactional service which offers Cinema Previews, New Releases, a digital catalogue with over 50.000 films and TV Series, DVDs and Blu-Rays, Exclusive Gadgets and lots more. CHILI provides its service on Smart TVs, Blu-Ray players, PCs, Tablets and Smartphones. There are no monthly fees nor activation costs. CHILI offers the widest range of titles with thousands of movies and TV Series, thanks to agreements with the most important production companies, local distributors and independent labels. Founded in June 2012, CHILI is controlled by its founding managers. Other shareholders of note are: Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Viacom, Warner Bros.
Mike: Giorgio, what makes Chili.com different that other entertainment providers?
Giorgio: CHILI represents the first entertainment centred marketplace that enhances the transactional experience, including first vision, cinema previews, news, information on cast, reviews, photos, clips and customer ratings on theatrical releases and also cinema ticketing and booking, movies’ merchandising and DVD/BluRay Disc. CHILI offers a wide range of titles with more than 50,000 movies and TV series, thanks to agreements with the most important Major Studios, local distributors and independent labels.
Mike: What factors led you to selecting the name CHILI for your service?
Giorgio: At the beginning, we wanted to find a brand name which wasn’t directly related to movies, the digital distribution or internet. We liked the name CHILI because is international, easy to remember and easy to play with (like our section the chillest). Our domain name was initially CHILI.tv but we changed to CHILI.com in order to become more international and to emphasise our presence on all devices. It is also possible to represent CHILI with a self-explanatory icon, t’s a short name near the beginning of the alphabet.
Mike: CHILI.com sounds like a really great service. When I type in CHILI.com I’m greeted with the message “Sorry! CHILI Cinema is not yet available in your country. We are working to make it happen.” Why is the service not yet available in the USA? What is the primary market that you serve?
Giorgio: CHILI was founded in 2012 in Italy as a pay per view-streaming platform for watching on demand movies and TV series, and thanks to the domestic success we extended the perimeter of distribution to Austria, Poland, Germany and the UK. Now we are focused on commercially launching the new platform in these countries which represent 60% of the European market. At the moment we are concentrating our efforts in Europe, to further extend distribution perimeters is one of our future goals and we will definitely start with English speaking countries.
Mike: Can you tell me how you acquired the domain name? Was it a complex process?
Giorgio: Easy process, just expensive!
Mike: How has owning a premium name like CHILI severed your business needs?
Giorgio: For sure, at the beginning, having a brand name which doesn’t immediately bring to mind our services in phase where we are creating brand awareness has been complicated, on the other hand the name is intriguing and stimulates curiosity. Now in Italy, after 5 years, the brand notoriety has increased, overseas will catch up following the launch
Mike: What type of traffic numbers do you see at CHILI.com on a monthly basis
Giorgio: We have reached more than 1.3 million clients and we are increasing 50/100k clients monthly.
Mike: What are the types of hurdles you face as on online media business?
Giorgio: At the end the hardest issue is to catch the consumer attention in a very competitive arena, consumers are targeted in many different ways but the time they have for media consumption doesn’t increase.
Finally the piracy still remains rampant even though the quality is very low.
2 comments
I registered Chili.com back on 1997 and sold it in 2013 in the six figure range. It obviously changed hands since then. Great name and it’s nice seeing it used in such a creative manner. This generic one word .com will always have immense value. Nice interview and good luck
Michael, thanks for stopping by and providing some history on this one. I’ll have to do some research and see if it was in use prior to the current owners site.