David Sullivan is a London-based businessman who made his fortune in the pornography industry.
Born in 1949 in Cardiff, Wales, David Sullivan is a British businessman who began his career in advertising after studying economics at Queen Mary University of London.
Initially working in relatively low-paid sales roles, he later turned to entrepreneurship in the early 1970s when he launched a mail-order business selling adult photographs with a university acquaintance.
The operation, run from east London, expanded rapidly into the sale of adult magazines and instructional publications, evolving into a significant commercial enterprise within the UK’s emerging adult entertainment market. As the business grew, it attracted media attention and criticism from sections of the press, which at the time described it in highly derogatory terms.
While his business partner later exited the industry, Sullivan continued to develop and expand the venture, which became one of the more prominent adult publishing operations in Britain during that period.
With his business partner David Gold, Sullivan’s first venture was selling softcore pornographic photos. They expanded into sex shops, adult magazines and low-budget blue movies, making Sullivan a millionaire by the age of 25.
Sullivan opened his first sex shop, called Private Shop, in 1978, with plans to expand across the UK.
By the late 1970s, he was in control of half of the UK adult magazine market, including major titles such as Playbirds and Whitehouse,[6] 80% of the adult mail order market, and 150 shops.
In the late 1970s, he produced several low-budget British sex movies including Come Play with Me (1977) (directed by Harrison Marks).
This was followed by The Playbirds (1978), Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair (1979) and Queen of the Blues (1979), all starring his then-girlfriend Mary Millington. After Millington’s suicide in August 1979, he continued trading off her name with Mary Millington’s True Blue Confessions (1980). Millington had also been intended to star in his next film, Emmanuelle in Soho (1981).
