If you're not serving the male crossdresser market, you should be. According to people who cater to crossdressers, such as Stacy Kanas of Cross-Dress.com, these consumers spend heavily to transform themselves into their female fantasies.
"This is a market that does have a lot of money," Kanas tells ANB. "What helps is that these clients purge their wardrobes from time to time, providing us with more sales opportunities."
As clients go, crossdressers are ideal: their sexuality often is central to a transformation that usually requires specialized, sexually oriented products. Thus, adult stores are uniquely positioned to serve them best.
But, who are these customers, what do they buy, and what is the best way to market to them?
Who They Are
The vast majority of crossdressers—and those who will generate the most revenue—are males dressing up to be "femmes." Typically heterosexual and often married with children, these clients express an identity they may normally hide otherwise. As with any fetish, crossdressers come from all walks of life, races, and age brackets. Niches in the world of crossdressing include drag, a special form of performance art based on crossdressing, and "underdressing," where female undergarments are worn under male clothing.
Depending on how comfortable such clients are with their fetish and where it is safe for them to express themselves, they may be public or extremely private about it. "When I first started offering these products decades ago, 95 percent of the men I served told me that their families didn't know about their crossdressing," says Michael Salem, operator of the crossdressing retail site MichaelSalem.com. "Things have improved over the years, but the fact remains that most crossdressers are pretty closeted."
"There are some crossdressers who keep everything in a duffle bag stowed in the trunk of their car," says Veronica Vera, dean of Miss Vera's Finishing School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls (MissVera.com) in New York City. Her school offers a range of premium courses to help crossdressers make their appearances and actions more convincingly feminine. "Others have a closet dedicated to their second life; some even have entire apartments set aside for crossdressing in private."
The bottom line: Crossdressers come from all parts of society. What they share is a desire to express their feminine side—privately or for the world at large.
Gauge the Market
Overall, successful retailers in this market excel in providing apparel and other items that will transform a customer's appearance from male to female. This includes dresses, lingerie, shoes men can actually fit into, makeup, and prosthetics, such as silicone breasts and wearable vaginas.
Finding products for male crossdressers can be a challenge. Michael Salem had such a hard time meeting the needs of the market for his discreet crossdressing store in New York City that he began to source larger-sized lingerie and women's shoes himself—either by finding third-party companies willing to make custom wear or doing it himself. "A lot of manufacturers are not comfortable producing for the crossdressing market, so you have to tell them that you are serving very large or tall women," he notes. "That's still the case today!"
Then there's the prosthetics market. Thanks to advancements in silicone, the range and realism of artificial breasts has improved vastly. With careful sizing, application, and makeup, an adept crossdresser can convince most people that his breasts are natural.
Retailers such as Cross-Dress.com sell special items called "gaffs" to hide telltale penises. A gaff is a piece of lingerie similar to an athletic supporter that presses the penis flat against the body. An artificial vagina can be worn over the gaff, to provide the right shape for panties.
"Some of these artificial vaginas are quite functional," says Stacy Kanas. "For instance, one model that doesn't require a gaff allows the wearer to stow his penis inside the form and urinate through holes in the vagina when they need to go the bathroom."
"Finding products is still such a challenge that we manufacture many items specifically for this market ourselves," she adds. "For instance, I make the gaffs and padded panty undergarments, which we sell to customers and wholesale to other stores."
The bottom line: Having a specialized inventory may open up a new revenue stream. Note: Some or all of the aforementioned products have crossover appeal, i.e. silicone breasts, larger-sized lingerie, and shoes.
Use Discretion
Like other non-mainstream customers, crossdressers can feel self-conscious shopping in public.
"When I was a child, my father ran Salem Hosiery in New York on Madison Avenue," recalls Salem. "We catered to the upper-crust of society: the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Bronfmans. Well, every so often a crossdresser would come in and discreetly ask for women's hosiery. These were clients that my father insisted on serving himself, to preserve their privacy. Discretion mattered then, and it still does today."
"We are always extremely careful to respect our clients' privacy," he adds. "For instance, if we send them their purchase by Fedex, we never put our name on the package. We also arrange to have the package left at a Fedex depot, rather than at their office or home."
Two other measures to make these customers comfortable are offering them a private shopping space in your store and providing a full range of products online.
Regarding style, "although many crossdressers have an exaggerated view of femininity and want to look like Marilyn Monroe," says Salem, others "are more interested in looking like sophisticated career women or young mothers," Vera says. In other words, the range of clothing that appeals to crossdressers has broadened over the years.
Most importantly, these consumers also want to refine the realism of their alter egos for themselves and the world outside. This desire explains why Miss Vera's Finishing School is a financial success, despite its relatively pricey tuition fees ($550 for two hours; $3295-$3795 plus expenses for two days). "The reason it became so successful was that I had hit about every crossdresser's wet dream, i.e. to come to a school where they could learn how to go from male to female," says Vera (who is a genetic female, for the record). "I did not realize it at the time, but this idea was already prevalent in tranny literature."
Sales opportunities don't stop at larger-sized fetish wear and prosthetics. "Adult stores could appeal to the crossdressing market by offering ‘starter kits' for beginners," Vera suggests. "They could also capitalize by providing erotica that shows male-to-female transformations and sex in positive, beautiful ways. I'm not talking about ‘forced feminization' or ‘chicks with dicks.' I'm referring to sensual erotica that portrays crossdressing in a positive, hot, and heterosexual manner."
By catering to this large niche with respect and discretion, retailers may benefit from repeat business for years.
The bottom line: As with the rest of your client base, successful marketing is about offering the right products, discreet, respectful service, and enabling a fantasy.
