College students used to ask Joel Tucker whether he worshipped Satan or had sex with animals-and that was after he'd already spent time explaining that intelligent, educated people can engage in consensual bondage, domination, submission, and sadomasochism. Now, when he speaks at the same college two decades later, the students all want to know how to get in on the BDSM action.
BDSM has certainly become more mainstream over the past two decades, and in some ways that makes things a lot easier for him. "For me to start a company like this was a pretty big step in the late 1980s. I felt like I was taking my spot on the front lines of another wave of the sexual revolution," says Joel Tucker, founder of Stockroom, which he says was the first adult toy company to launch on the Internet.
Now, the pioneer of kink e-commerce has to work harder than ever to stay ahead of the competition.
"Companies in the adult industry are, on average, much more kink aware. And as a result it's a much more competitive landscape, which can be much more beneficial to the consumer," he says. "Everything we've invented has been knocked off, and that just makes it harder to sell the original article that's of high quality when everything copies it and is of lower quality."
Tucker no longer just watches others copy his ideas; he has attorneys file for patents. Stockroom recently obtained a patent on the Bolero straitjacket, which leaves the torso exposed for play while still restraining the arms. The jacket actually has a medical application, enabling the confinement of a patient who could have electrodes attached to the chest.
"We're not big proponents of institutional restraint-we'd rather see it consensual," Tucker says. His company has also patented a jawbreaker gag, which relies on a big piece of candy to silence the submissive.
Tucker's newest pet project involves driving traffic to Stockroom.com from a recently acquired BDSM community site. As of press time, he wouldn't reveal the name of the online destination, but noted that the virtual property would also link to the company's online forum, Kinkwire.com, and its news site, SandM.com.
Stockroom has also rebuilt its main web platform and expected to launch it early this year. The new system has more flexibility to accommodate affiliates and partnership deals.
Such deals have grown over the years to the point that Stockroom dominates the supplying of props to BDSM content providers. "The first time I saw something that I made in a bondage magazine, I was in my 20s. These days it's the exception that I see something that I didn't make," says Tucker.
The company's fetishwear also dominates the mainstream entertainment industry wherever leather and latex are considered fashionable-from rock stars on stage to action heroes on screen.
The latex fashions come from Syren, which Stockroom acquired last year, in addition to its purchase of Stormy Leather. All three brands have separate yet linked websites, but sell together in physical stores in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company also owns Daedalus Publishing, thanks to a 2000 transaction. Across all of these subsidiaries, about 65 percent of the business comes from products that Tucker would call kinky. Toys-as opposed to fashions-represent about 70 percent of revenues.
Its collection of male chastity devices is Stockroom's most successful product line. The most recent item always fares the best, but past models still sell briskly. Tucker's latest innovation is the CB6000, and in case you couldn't guess already, the initials stand for cock and balls.
Though Stockroom trades in bondage, there's no restraining the company's growth. The enterprise has been profitable from the very first year, when Tucker rang up about $500 in sales while still a college student. As soon as he graduated in the early 1990s, he started earning a living from the business. He realized the fattest profit margin ever during 2003, another time when the overall economy was lukewarm at best.
"Since then the business has become more competitive. And as the affiliate model has taken off, that means paying commissions. It raises your volume" but eats into your margins, said Tucker.
Even in today's less-than-perfect economic conditions, when other adult novelty retailers are seeing sales drop by as much as 50 percent, Tucker's company maintains a healthy 10 to 20 percent annual growth rate and foresees no end to its good fortune. "We couldn't even imagine being this big or well organized, having this many project managers or sales meetings," says Tucker of Stockroom's early years. "If we worked as hard in 1998 as we're working now, we'd have been growing 200 percent a year."
For more information, visit Stockroom.com.
