Yes, he’s the JT in JT’s Stockroom, but Joel Tucker is a lot more. To put it simply, he’s a visionary.
Not only was Tucker doing business online in 1990, before there was a World Wide Web, but he and his company also helped move kink into the mainstream. Today, he operates one of the pre-eminent fetish and BDSM shops in the world. He’s built his empire of handcuffs, bondage gear, and paddles almost entirely online, but it wasn’t easy. Tucker was forced to leave California and move back to rural Illinois just to keep Stockroom alive. He even considered selling at one point, but persevered. After two years, he returned to L.A. with a thriving business that is an important member of the kink community, which Tucker never will let become marginalized.
How did you get into the lifestyle?
These are interests for me that came up organically, as people’s sexual inclinations often do. It’s something I started exploring in the real world around the age of 19. At 21, I found an organization called Threshold, which was a social club for people with BDSM interests. I went to some of their meetings and discovered an environment where fetishes could be discussed freely. I found that liberating, because I had been closeted up until then.
That propelled you into the business?
Yeah, I wanted gear for myself and thought the prices were high. A college student with a $50 budget couldn’t really afford to get toys, so I started making them. From the beginning, my aim was to make this stuff more affordable. I still wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing and functional, but I was looking for ways to make it more affordable.
What was it like doing business online back then?
There were a lot of places to go on the Internet—news groups, FTP sites, email, file sharing—a lot of that stuff was going on. My last year in college, I decided to give this business a go full time. One of my clients suggested I do an electronic version of my catalog and distribute it by email. I felt like an idiot that I hadn’t thought of that myself. I’d been online and discussed my company and did a little promotion, but I was trying to promote the print catalog. I spent the next couple of days writing that up as a text document. At that time, the Internet was mostly text. If you had a picture you wanted to share, it would have to be done as a separate file transfer. The Internet was kind of small, but we were pretty busy doing business by sending out text catalogs and getting orders by email.
What was the structure of your business then?
I did this in a spare room in my apartment. In 1990, I did the first electronic catalog, and within a couple of months it became primarily an online business. Before that, I had just done a few catalogs I had reproduced on Xerox machines. The business started to take off when I took it online.
Would you consider yourself an e-commerce pioneer?
I wouldn’t disagree. When I look in some of the early books on the subject that came out in 1991 or 1992, there were just a few examples they could cite of people doing business in this underground medium called the Internet, and my company was sometimes mentioned as an example. At one point, I would say we had a really significant percentage of all the money being spent on the Internet.
Was the move back to Illinois humbling?
It was definitely humbling. I saw it as a defeat to admit that this business wasn’t growing fast enough in L.A. and to think about running home to cut my expenses. Once I got home, back to my family’s 200-acre farm in southern Illinois, I looked around and remembered how beautiful it was. I was actually kind of happy to be there.
Did you ever doubt the viability of Stockroom?
Maybe a couple of times. In the early ’90s, the economy wasn’t so good, and the soon-to-come explosive growth for the Internet and my company didn’t seem obvious at that time. After a while, it seemed to be growing at a pace where—even if it were a small business—if I could just keep the growth rate going, it wouldn’t be long before it became a decent living.
What did you learn from that experience?
Don’t be afraid to start over. What looks like a defeat can turn into the beginning of a victory if you just figure out your game plan and work it for a while.
How did your parents feel about your business?
My father has always been inclined to support me as long as I wasn’t harming someone else. This isn’t necessarily the business he would have picked for me, but he’s always been supportive and accepted it from the start. My mother is a little more conservative. It was a little bit more of a struggle for her to accept it. It helped when the business actually started making some money. She’s made her peace with it now, and I think has even discovered a little bit of pride for my success.
Stockroom has a certain prestige associated with it. Can you define what that is?
The business was born in the ’80s, when kinky sex was taboo. There was a lot of fear surrounding it—if my boss finds out, I may be fired; if my wife finds out, I may be divorced, etc. I believe the percentage of the population with BDSM interests was always much higher than anyone in the ’80s imagined. I had a sense of that, but I was also a college student and wanted to see myself as a respectable member of society. Yet, I had these interests. So, there’s a little bit of idealism, intelligence, and a focus in our mission to try to educate and elevate the community through the work that we do.
Where do you think public acceptance is today for kink?
I don’t know that it’s 100 percent. I don’t know if it will ever be, but if it had been 25 percent before, it’s 75 percent now. For people who aren’t into kink, it may not seem like such a big deal, but for people who are kinky, I think there’s been a pretty profound shift in the culture.
Is there anything surprising in your top-selling products?
One popular item is the Aneros prostate massager. It can be used strictly for medical reasons, but a lot of men just appreciate it from a sensual standpoint. Something that may surprise others, but wasn’t a surprise to me, is I think we’re the largest vendor of the CB-2000 line of male chastity devices. We sell those in the thousands every year. The CB-3000, another male chastity device, is our top-selling product at the moment based on dollar volume.
What exactly are we talking about?
It’s a plastic cage that goes around the male genitalia and locks on. It prevents erections and orgasms. One of the central themes in BDSM is one person taking control over the other person. One of the ultimate turn-ons for men who are submissive is to give up that control to [their partner]. Most of the chastity devices we sell are being used for the joy of it, but there are some cases where there’s been infidelity, and this is how the woman knows the man has been faithful. It’s one way to lock things down, as it were.
What’s your favorite product?
I still stand by the very first thing I designed and made, which is the basic set of locking wrist and ankle cuffs. They’re attractive, they’re functional, they’re quick and easy to use.
What percentage of your products is designed in-house?
About 30 percent. The other merchandise we distribute is from other companies.
I assume most of your business comes from online.
It always has since 1990, but we keep producing the print catalog. It’s not the biggest direct revenue generator, but I feel like it pays for itself. It reaches people who don’t shop online, and there are still a lot of those people around.
What’s the breakdown?
My best guess is the print catalog probably brings 25 to 30 percent of our business. The rest is the website.
What about physical stores?
We recently acquired Syren, a fetish fashion company that specializes in latex fashions primarily. That acquisition came with a retail store. We’re moving into it now and focusing on fetish fashion. We’re selling some Stockroom gear, but staying away from full-on sex toys. We’re trying to stay away from the sex shop vibe.
Are you planning on expanding that presence?
We’re going to see how this one goes. We hope it will be successful and something we want to expand over time.
Who do you look up to in the adult business?
Hugh Hefner. He’s somebody who went into a business that, at that time, was considered marginal and not very respectable, but he did it with a vision that it could be something more acceptable to the mainstream. He had success in realizing that vision and, in the process, effected a cultural change.
If you were ever on the cover of Forbes, what would you want the headline to read?
“An Independent Path to Success.”
