LOS ANGELES—From universal to highly specialized adult products, the last two seminars of the 2021 Adult Novelty Expo (ANE) emphasized the necessity of well-educated retailers.
Friday morning’s “Do You Want Lube with That?” gently glided viewers into ANE’s final day and, but for each panelist Zooming in from his or her home, could easily have been its informal but informative counterpart from last January in Las Vegas, immediately pre-COVID. Regardless, in a lockdown quickly approaching its second year, the slick and polished lube vendors spoke very little of the pandemic but instead got right down to business.
“Lube is almost guaranteed with every sale,” said moderator John Marinello from Pjur. “It’s not necessarily needed, but it’s an enhancement.”
Panelists weighed in, sometimes passionately, about the merits or shortfalls of certain kinds of lube. Cheryl Sloane of Uberlube,a 20-year veteran of adult boutiques, came down pretty hard on glycerin-based lube, which, from her experience, she doesn’t recommend to women who are prone to yeast infections. Echoing this, JB of System Jo explained that glycerin once came from animal fat and “it’s different than it was.” Later, he provided a helpful visual aid for objection handling vis a vis the question “Will my silicone lube melt my silicone toy?”—he produced a massive pink silicone dildo immersed for two weeks in a “cocktail” of silicone lube, demonstrating by both stretching the dildo and then whacking it on a table that silicone lube does not destroy silicone toys.
That said, each panelist stressed, retailers and their employees should be experts on their products, especially lube, which is a Class 2 medical device.
Cassie Pendleton of Wicked Sensual Care Products agreed that lube, as a “consumable”—a product that needs to be restocked in a customer’s home more frequently than, say, a $200 toy—is what gets customers in the door, but added that “lube is for everybody but not every lube is for every body,” so retailers have the opportunity to educate customers and give thoughtful recommendations of, for example, toys to “pair” with that bottle of lube.
“If you’re looking for ice cream, you can be sure there’s going to be an endcap for chocolate syrup,” Pendleton said.
Noting that “customers remember about 25 percent of what you say,” JB said it was imperative for sales staff to have their facts straight regarding ingredients in lube and possible contraindications. “Because it takes (just) one bad experience to keep your customer from coming back to your store.”
Both of the day’s panels were notable for featuring industry veterans—many of whom had worked on “the novelty side” of the adult business for decades and who not only knew the ever-tightening safety standards of lube but who also knew how to reassure jittery customers.
Briana Watkins of Swiss Navy said she told customers to “listen to (their) bodies,” adding, in re: the other veterans in the group, “at our age we should know our bodies by now.”
The final afternoon session turned the telescope around to the niche market. Moderated by Kim Airs (who’d also curated the panels and co-hosted the “O” Awards two nights before), “Niche Products That Fill A Niche Hole” again seemed as much a raucous reunion of old colleagues as it did a business seminar.
Transman and porn-star-turned product pitchman Buck Angel (wearing a “Tranpa” hat) talked about “T-Wash,” a hygiene product specifically for transmale vaginal health.
“People still don’t understand trans bodies, especially trans male bodies,” he said, amplifying the theme that retailers need to be educators, especially in an emerging but underserved market. “My community doesn’t have a lot of money,” Angel said. “They’re struggling on so many levels (so at least give them appropriate sex products).”
Rob Reimer of Boneyard Toys joined other panelists in advising purveyors of niche products—which are usually small businesses—to work smart.
“If something doesn’t sell,” he said, “we take it out of our lineup.”
Removing dead weight from the inventory allows room for innovation. Reimer’s example of this was his discovery of “sounding,” a urological procedure involving inserting a metal rod into the urethra to gain access to the bladder. Appropriated for recreational use by the gay community, sounding was something Reimer hadn’t been familiar with, but he later developed specialized sounding rods (The Pissholer) for Boneyard, which Airs was quick to point out were not “tiny anal beads.”
Shellie Martin of Crystal Delights (“We didn’t start out expecting to be butt plug experts, but it just sort of worked out that way”) said that niche manufacturers/retailers, as a rule, “improve on what large manufacturers can’t, or won’t.” Further, she said, “Small manufacturers are more willing to bust their backsides” to provide quality service to retailers.
Cathy Ziegler of Kheper Games was the only panelist who wasn’t from a company that made products to insert in oneself, but who nevertheless saw adult novelties not as games or devices but as “foreplay vehicles.”
While a generation in the porn performing world might last for five years, colleagues in the adult novelty business mark their friendships in multiple decades, and as such, panelists in the Niche seminar talked about businesses that had lasted 20 or 30 years, from a time when a sex shop might carry just one brand of lube, and now stores have whole Trans sections.
And just as the previous panel had addressed fears of silicone lube eating silicone toys, the Niche panel dispelled a myth about the safety of glass (“What if it breaks?”) dildos
“No one puts a drink glass up to their teeth in a restaurant and asks ‘what if it breaks?’” Airs said. “Maybe if you’re fucking on the hood of your dad’s Porsche and the dildo falls out, it might break…I mean, I’m a vagina owner and, last time I checked, I don’t have teeth down there.”
Members of both panels seemed keen on emphasizing a command of available data, years of personal experience, and sober, non-hysterical education in making adult products accessible and fun.
“It’s all part of normalizing sex,” Airs said.
