For adult novelty fans in the Connecticut area, Very Intimate Pleasures (VIP, for short) is the place to shop. Well, two places to shop actually; VIP offers randy consumers a double helping of goods in two gigantic stores. The original outlet was and is in Hartford, and roughly three years ago, VIP branched into the New Haven/Orange area.
“We sell everything that has to do with adult,” said VIP General Manager Rick Lederman. “We carry about 20,000-plus titles of DVDs. We carry probably every major toy company, every toy out there. Smoking accessories, full lingerie department, shoes, novelties, gags, lotions, oils — the full gamut. Pretty much everything out there.”
You need a lot of space to offer such a grand and wide variety of product, and VIP is virtually the Wal-Mart of adult novelties. The stores in Hartford and New Haven/Orange are 9,200 and 11,000 square feet respectively of wall-to-wall sex objects. And VIP isn’t stopping there.
“We're about to open up our third, which is gonna be our megastore,” stated Lederman, a veteran of eight years in the novelty field, the last three spent with VIP. “The one we're about to open will be around 16,000 square feet. We are trying to gun for a Sept. 1 opening, and the location is Manchester.”
VIP’s clean, happy atmosphere goes a long way toward making patrons of all types feel comfortable. Which is a good thing, as VIP caters to patrons of all types.
“We're not a dirty atmosphere,” said Lederman. “Not like the way stores used to be a long time ago. We're very upscale. We have a 300-gallon fish tank behind the counter. Very eye-catching, very clean. Very expensive fixtures in the store.
“We're not just throwing movies on a rack and on the wall. We try to cater to the demographic of couples and women,” Lederman revealed. “We are definitely a woman-oriented store: very clean, very customer service friendly. The majority of all our staff is women. As far as an age demographic, we’ve got anywhere from 18 to 80 coming to our store.”
Lederman provided the breakdown as far as who’s buying what:
“I would say the single male that comes through the door is predominantly a DVD buyer. The couples that come in through the door are definitely leaning more towards the toys and lubes. And then our female clientele predominantly focuses on toys and lingerie. We do have a humongous lingerie department; it’s probably half our store.”
Of course, the piece de resistance in the growing world of VIP is the upcoming branch in Manchester.
“Our biggest store is definitely going to be a trendsetter,” gushed Lederman. “We're definitely going to be setting the bar really, really high.”
Which means?
“Have you ever been in the Venetian [site of last January’s AVN Awards Show] or the Paris in Vegas? Have you seen how they have the sky painted on the ceiling? We're doing that,” said Lederman. “We have that in Orange store already. In the Manchester store, we're doing the same, but adding some extras to it. We'll definitely have skies painted on it. It's gonna be very eye catching, very eye appealing.
“We've got marble floors that we flew in from Italy. That type of concept. We have pillars and columns in the store. That's kind of our theme, a Greek theme. And since we have columns in both stores, we're definitely keeping our column trend going to arches and pathways.”
It’s also about location, location, location, a key factor as Connecticut sees a lot of traffic, situated as it is between New York and Boston.
“Both of our stores are right off the highway,” said Lederman, “which is our number one form of advertising. We probably have about 13 billboards all across the interstate; 91 and 95 are our two biggest junctions. We do pull a little bit more of the out of state people because they are coming through to see New England in the fall because of the leaves changing. So we pick up extra people that have never been in a store like this.”
According to Lederman, VIP is not going to stop at a mere three stores.
“There’s a lot to consider,” he stated. “Timing is everything, plus the location, the zoning, and who might give us guff and who might not. If it was up to me, I'd like to have one of these in every state.”
For more information on VIP, contact Rick Lederman in Hartford at 860.246.1875, and Paul Mortenson in Orange at 203.799.7040.
