The skin industry has earned Larry Flynt billions of dollars over the decades, but it’s not treating him as well these days.

The circulation of his 20 magazines is virtually flat, sales are falling at his Hustler retail shops and traffic at his online porn sites is slowing.

So the 66-year-old Flynt now is expanding beyond adult fare into a more mainstream business. He has been quietly buying up Web sites that sell trendy, urban-themed apparel, such as expensive T-shirts.

“When one of my executives came to me and said that he wanted us to invest in e-commerce Web sites that sell T-shirts, I wasn’t very interested at first especially because he said the T-shirts were priced at $100,” recalled Flynt. “I thought, ‘Who’s going to pay $100 for a T-shirt?'”

It turns out lots of people, especially young females who, despite the slowing economy, will dig deep to get the right garment.

While Hustler-branded apparel and jewelry dominate online sales at such sites as HusterLingerie.com, online shoppers might be surprised to know that when they buy T-shirts, caps or jewelry from about a dozen sites such as MetalMulisha, SilverStar, So-CalSpeedShop, NoFear and Tapout, they’re actually buying from LFP Publications Inc.

Most of the products appeal to those interested in extreme sports, heavy metal music and the like.

In fact, sales are so strong that Flynt has decided to pour serious money into the e-commerce endeavor. He plans to buy many more such apparel-selling sites, and he’s spending millions to build a warehouse and office complex in Chatsworth.

He and his executives did not want to disclose the exact location of the warehouse-office operation. But it is expected to house the goods sold online, while the front offices are to be occupied by Web executives and a cadre of technicians who will keep the operations running.

Flynt began selling Hustler-branded apparel and accessories online about two years ago on its own sites, generating about $8 million in annual revenue. But Flynt believes that with his new collection of mainstream Web sites, his company can generate upwards of $50 million a year from online apparel and accessories in two to three years.

That could be dismissed as the kind of rosy prediction that enthusiastic business operators usually make. However, online apparel sales the core business of Flynt’s sites have increased 37 percent so far this year, topping $1 billion for the first time, said Ilse Metchek, president of the California Fashion Association.

“The online apparel business is booming, even in this economy,” said Metchek, who recently completed a study of online apparel sales that showed profit margins can exceed 100 percent on T-shirts with the vast majority of buyers female. “And the profit margins are higher because you have fewer employees and no need to lease store space.”

Online challenges

Flynt’s always been a maverick. His Hustler magazine went further than other such publications in its era. He was one of the first to bring porn into homes using video, and in 1994 he was one of the first to take skin flicks to the Internet as a subscription business.

Now, though, the Internet has become more of a threat to many of his older enterprises. Advances in technology have made high-quality video widely and cheaply available, lowering the barriers to entry into the online adult sex industry. That has eaten into the circulation of his magazines and is eroding adult DVD sales.

“If you can get it for free on the Internet, why would you go down to the newsstand and pay $7 for it?” said Flynt.

Flynt is threatening to get out of the DVD business by the end of the year, but he’s not shedding the adult business altogether. In fact, Flynt Enterprises, which operates out of a prominent Wilshire Boulevard high-rise that Flynt owns in Beverly Hills, still generates the vast majority of its estimated $300 million in annual revenues from broadcasting adult fare on pay-per-view over cable and satellite in more than 40 countries.

And he is spending $28 million to build what he boasts will be the world’s largest strip club, taking up more than 60,000 square feet of floor space in Las Vegas. Hustler Clubs, which Flynt refers to as “gentlemen’s clubs,” is where Flynt got his start in the adult industry in 1968.

Indeed, if anything, Flynt seems more driven by the challenge of a new business. Hugh Hefner may revel in his status as a sexual revolution icon, but Flynt aside from his occasional flings as a First Amendment freedom fighter has always been a businessman at heart.

A few years ago, Flynt quietly tried his hand at trade magazines, purchasing about a dozen that focused on everything from the furniture to the computer game industries. He’s held on to only one, Gibson Greats, a computer game magazine that targets video game enthusiasts under 20.

New business

Flynt didn’t want to talk much about the trade magazines during a recent interview except to say they didn’t make enough money, but he is eager to discuss his newest businesses. For example, he talked at some length about how databases can be used to boost online apparel sales.

“The more Web sites we acquire and the more consumer information that we gather through buying up databases, together with our operations in Chatsworth, the better our profit margins will be,” he said.

Flynt, whose was paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in 1978, is not doing it all himself. His physical limitations are obvious: He speaks in a barely audible voice and appears to have limited strength in his hands, which he slowly raises and lowers as he drinks.

He’s hired Michael Klein, president of his Internet and broadcasting businesses, to oversee the new e-commerce endeavor. Klein was an executive at TVN Entertainment, the world’s largest on-demand entertainment company, before he was hired by Flynt a few years ago.

“I believe what drives Larry is a real love for the business, no matter what business that he may be involved in,” said Klein, who has his hand in virtually all of Flynt’s operations.

“You have to remember that this is a guy who started with basically a four-page newsletter promoting his clubs and turned it into an internationally recognized brand and diversified empire. You don’t do that without a tremendous amount of drive and perseverance.”