CHATSWORTH, Calif.—The Adult Novelty Expo began its weeklong seminar program on Tuesday with a pair of informative and impassioned panels staffed with longtime experts in the profession. The first, a morning session titled “How Understanding Anatomy Can Help Your Customers,” embraced a topic rarely examined but rich with tactile relevance to the sex toy oeuvre. The second seminar of the day, an afternoon session titled “Post-COVID Brick and Mortar Retailing – The Pros and Cons,” provided an up-to-date and candid look at the travails and successes of a sampling of shops from around the country as they maneuver the pandemic.
With only 45 minutes to play with, Kim Airs, moderator of both panels, jumpstarted the morning seminar by holding up a 3D rubber model of a humongous clitoris. “I don’t know how many people are familiar with this,” she said. “It’s available on Etsy. You can get them in different sizes, and these, for those of you who are watching, are excellent teaching tools. Teaching tools … it's all about that. I see everybody nodding in agreement.”
She next held up a Wondrous Vulva Puppet, for the same reason. “Again, a wonderful teaching tool,” she exclaimed. The point being that becoming informed about the nuances of anatomy is almost a prerequisite to providing people with informed suggestions about which sex toy to buy.
Panelists Kerin De Francis of Doc Johnson, Conde Aumann of Screaming O, and Ducky Doolittle of Blush Novelties could not have agreed more. This was basically an everyone-on-the-same-page conversation, espousing the uncontested view that a little bit of knowledge goes a long way in making a sex toy customer feel secure. Not all retail associates can be expected to be equally mission-driven, explained Doolitle, but the arc of the sector bends toward more information and education, not less.
“We are a younger brand that believes all bodies are beautiful, worthy and deserving of celebration and pleasure,” she said. “That's our mission statement, that’s where we stand. So, anatomy is really essential. We're thinking about people and bodies and experiences with every creation.”
Airs' initial question, directed to De Francis first, was seminal in its simplicity: Why is knowing anatomy important for sales staff?
“I think first and foremost, what we are doing inevitably is helping people simulate these parts of their body,” responded De Forest. “If you have a customer that has questions about certain parts [of their body] and how they [can] stimulate them, if you're not quite aware of these parts of your body, then it could be tricky to make the proper recommendation. It's interesting, I've talked to vulva owners before that don't exactly know where their clitoris is, and if they do know where it is, they don't exactly know a lot about it. They think it's just this little fleshy nub that's at the top of the vagina. But it's so much more than that. I mean, it goes in so much deeper inside the walls of the vagina.
“I mean, you might know something about vulvas, you might know something about penises, but if you don't know all of it, I don't know how you can always make the right recommendation for toys,” she added. “I almost equate it to going to Home Depot. You have a project you're working on and you go there, and you're pumped, and you're like, ‘I'm working on this [project], what do I need to get?’ And the Home Depot person sends you back with the wrong nuts and bolts, you get it home and it doesn't quite work right.
“The same goes with toys," she continued. “You have people coming to you looking for answers, but if you make recommendations on an anal play toy and you don't ask clarifying questions, you can send them home with something that just doesn't work for them. It can throw off their whole night, much less their opinion of toys or the store. So, I think anatomy is a number one priority.”
Airs loved the analogy. “Because I think when you normalize things around sex, if somebody's like, ‘Oh, I'm not sure what to get,’ you can say, ‘Well, think of us as the Home Depot for sex tours,” she said. “That immediately takes away all the negativity they might have grown up with, or whatever baggage they have around sexuality, because nobody thinks twice about walking into Home Depot.”
Airs inquired what educational materials if any the companies have online or printed for use by sales staff. Doolittle from Blush said the company blog links to online classes. “We have a bank of about 35 product knowledge and sex education classes,” she said. “There's a class on pleasure anatomy, but there's also sex after baby, sex after cancer. I am a cancer survivor. I was able to survive, breathe, and then teach. We have a lot of [educational content] because we know that some of the best grassroots sex education in the world happens in sex shops, undoubtedly.”
Aumann from Screaming O added, “We have prerecorded videos up on screamingo.com/training. Then, what we've actually been doing through our Facebook page is, every Thursday at 11 a.m. Pacific time, Keli gets on and does a [livestream] training [session]. She does different topics and things like that. Then, we redid our entire offices and got to enjoy them for approximately 11 months [until the pandemic hit]. Now we're at home, but we have this absolutely gorgeous studio with all sorts of different places to make videos, and Keli's been doing a lot of that. On the SPAM Group (Sex Professionals and Manufacturers) on Facebook, most manufacturers have topics and we've been doing week-long takeovers, and there's a lot of content in there as well. And we're always available if someone wants to do a live one.” Airs concurred the Facebook SPAM group is an “incredible resource,” and encouraged all listeners to join.
The panelists were asked what anatomical terminology they use when training staff. “When I'm talking to somebody who potentially would be selling to consumers, I always try to use the anatomically correct words,” said Aumann. “Before I got to screaming, I did home parties for eight years, and the interesting thing, especially back then, is that most of the audience was really green with sex toys.” She recalled one woman who wouldn’t touch a sex toy until her third house party, after which she finally bought one and became a hostess herself. “It was neat watching the evolution of this person.
“The neat thing about the English language,” she added, “is there are a hundred ways to say almost any body part, and to just kind of lighten up the topic a little sometimes helps that person become comfortable enough to make a sale.”
Doc Johnson‘s De Francis agreed, adding, “I think you kind of need to read the room because we're here to normalize sexuality. I want people to feel as comfortable as possible. I want them to learn, I want them to have a great time. So, what I usually do is kind of like code switch here and there, stick to the script. It's really about reading the room for me.”
Airs, who owned a brick-and-mortar shop in the Boston area for ten years, noted that consumer body language is also something to be aware of when they enter a store. "Just for people to walk into a store, you know, we take that all for granted,” she said. “But for a lot of people, it's really difficult to open the door. So be aware of this when you're talking to them. Don't assume they have this knowledge, and don't assume people that might look comfortable do, too.”
Doolittle, a trauma-informed educator who worked for eight years in the ER as a sexual assault violence intervention counselor, recounted an experience that changed the way she interacts with people in her classes. “I was teaching at a shop in Baltimore called Sugar. I was teaching a basic female orgasm class, and I have anatomy charts. I've showed them a million times, and I crack a joke. I'm like, you may recognize this, and it'll be a picture of a vulva. But when I did my usual, you may recognize this and then they kind of giggled it out, somebody in the second row passed-out cold on the floor. And it was so traumatic because we weren't sure. Are they diabetic? Did they not get enough food? The whole workshop had to stop and assess.
“What I learned afterwards,” she continued, “was that this gentleman was a veteran, and the only other time he had passed out in his life was in a mortuary class that he had to take as a part of his military training. It was hard experience, I felt so bad for the guy, I hadn't done anything, it wasn't my fault, but what I learned was to recognize that I don't know someone else's experience. Sex can be bright, and sex can be dark, and anatomy has the same potential to be just as frightening as any product or anything else we put out in the world. So, now, when I'm doing an online class or an in-person class, when I'm about to show my anatomy charts, I say, ‘Okay, I'm going to show you an anatomy chart now.’ And that simple twist of how I present it has made it so that I know that if there is another person in the world who has a trigger [about] having to see anatomy on any level, or have fear in their heart, that they have the opportunity to drop and breathe and come back to me. So, I love that you picked this topic, Kim, because like with everything, you can be the young smart-mouth person I was back in the day, but we all have the potential to be better.”
Airs responded, “As I’ve said before, we are often the first person that people talk to and open up to. I was always so amazed and so honored to listen to somebody who you knew didn't talk to their partners this way about their pleasure, about what they wanted. So, we as retailers, no matter if it's online or in person or [video chat] like this, we hold a really important position in the world. I’m going to get emotional, but it’s so true, so true. I mean, just really is to be able to be comfortable. Those of us that work in the business, to be comfortable with it, that's a gift. And so, alright, I'll go back into moderator mode now.”
Subsequent questions addressed when and whether to discuss medical conditions like erectile dysfunction and vaginismus, and how technical to get when product training. “It depends on the product line that I'm discussing how technical I get,” responded De Francis. “For instance, we do a brand called Optimale that is really designed around sexual health and wellness, or illness owners. In that circumstance, I will get a little bit more technical. We'll dive into prostate health, and how stimulating the prostate is just so healthy for penis owners in general. It helps prevent cancer and keeps everything moving. It's just really important. So, when I dive into something like that, I'll get a little bit more technical, because it's an important topic. We have roughly a quarter of a million people that get diagnosed with prostate cancer annually.”
Aumann noted that you have to be careful when making medical claims, adding that for the most part regulating agencies do not oversee the novelty sector unless a product contains active ingredients.
“For those of you who are wondering why it says novelty only, if you don't have that on it, it's prone to an FDA examination. So, a lot of people just put that on the packaging as a safety net, so to speak. What I love is when it's a dildo or an internal vibrator, and it says not to be used internally. But that's exactly why most of them do say sold as a novelty only. And it's so funny because what's the name of this program? The Adult Novelty Expo. We've got to come up with a new word other than novelty!”
Doolittle added a note of caution before the conversation moved on. “Going back to your original question about things like EDI and vaginismus and things like that, you do have to be careful, because in the retail environment, the person who takes on that sales job oftentimes they're only 23 or 24 years old. They took it because they need to work. They may not be mission driven. So, when I was managing teams, I always made sure that they understood that they could say I don't know, because if somebody comes in with questions about menopause, or cancer, anything like that, we cannot expect these workers to be able to speak to that.
“It is smart, however, to partner and find good medical professionals in your community, if you're running a store or an e-commerce site on your website, to be able to direct people,” she added.
There was a lot more real-world wisdom dispensed during the session, including the trenchant advice, in response to a viewer question about how to deal with transgender anatomy questions, to basically shut up and listen. It was that sort of discussion, grounded and considerate, and it made for a great start to the ANE program.
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Kim Airs also moderated Tuesday’s second seminar, which provided a fascinating look at the different ways brick-and mortar retailers from around the country have had to manage the still-virulent pandemic. Participating retailers included Kathi Pepper from Peppers Parties, Too! in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; Casey Lozano of the Patricia’s chain in the Midwest; and Kali Morgan of Passional Boutique & Sexploratorium in Philadelphia.
Even though Passional is closed Tuesdays, Morgan broadcast live from the shop floor to give people “a little peek of what we've got.” Open for in-store business now, the store was subject to closure in mid-March. “The mid-Atlantic states were definitely hotspots for coronavirus and subject to multiple levels of closures and legal limitations,” said Morgan, “but also opportunities to really promote sexual wellness.” That experience of opportunity during chaos and loss was shared by the others.
“We never stopped sales even though our doors were closed,” said Pepper, who rekindled sales out of her dormant home-based business when her proper brick-and-mortar had to temporarily shutter due to the pandemic. “As a matter of fact, when I submitted April's sales tax reports to my CPA, she said, ‘Are you kidding? You really did this much during COVID?’ I said, we did.”
With 16 stores scattered across Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, Patricia’s was in a potential pickle, COVID-wise. The decision was made to act decisively. “We met with all of the leaders and we said, you know what, it's coming, so we're just go ahead and do this now. So, we closed about a week before the mandates came down, and because we're a division of a larger company and kind of settled, we were able to plug into the government for the small business loans that were available. I have 157 employees and I was able to keep everyone on salary during that time, which was a huge blessing.”
Airs first asked the panelists to describe in more detail what they did during mandatory closures, how they handled it. “Luckily, we had a record-breaking January and February, so we were in pretty good shape when the closure happened [in mid-March],” said Morgan of Philadelphia’s Passional. “But there was like a moment of panic, of like, okay, we're doing really well now for the first time in a long time. What are we going to do?”
Approaching their 25th anniversary in business, the shop was still run old-school by a hands-on Morgan, who admitted the website was a far cry from adequate for what was about to happen. “So, we decided to take the record-breaking January and February, and really try to make a website that works. And we did lots of conference calls with different website platforms.” The result is a “functional website” with working ecommerce up and running as we speak.
When pandemic relief happened, it provided incentives the store could not match. “I did end up laying people off for that month and have them work part-time, answering calls when we were trying to get web orders and continuing to sell things to mail order without actually being open,” she said. “We also started doing free deliveries, most of which were done by me, but I had a couple of coworkers help me.”
The shop could have reopened in June, and Morgan wanted to, but with an exceedingly small staff, the decision was made to stay closed. “If somebody gets sick, then the whole store has to close down and not do anything for two weeks,” she explained. “And that is not what we want to see happen. We're a wellness brand, a body positive sexual wellness brand.
“Now, it’s much later and we're still not up as a public,” she continued. “We're doing store hours by appointment, we're doing curbside. And we're definitely down, more than 30 percent from last year, but the job is so much easier now because we have a goal. We're focused on our website, we're making sure that every single person who comes into the store is safe and has access to disinfected merchandise. And even though it's been financially challenging, I feel like we're on the road to something, and I think we are on the forefront in Philadelphia of showing how you can survive. If your goal is not to cash in, you can survive and build that trust with the public by implementing procedures that are universal.”
Lozano noted that the pandemic forced Patricia’s to do something it probably should have done a long time ago, but did not need to, which was finish building an online employee forum “for everyone to plug into when our stores were closed.” Employees were required to check in only once a week, but it allowed them to stay on top of an evolving situation. “We were able to not only keep in touch with one another, to provide motivational information for everyone, and also what to do when they could open their stores back up again.”
That centralized place was needed when stores could reopen. "Every executive order was different for every city,” she said. “We had some that were opening on March 20th. We didn't have all of our stores open until the end of May.”
Opening store by store also allowed Patricia’s to develop COVID-specific protocols, such as putting in two cash registers instead of one and making sure they were distanced from one another.
Not all states and cities mandated mask-wearing, however, which itself presented a problem. “Even though we had [wearing a mask] as our policy, I can't tell you how many slashed tires and broken windows I have had to replace from people protesting against that. We've protected our employees in such a way that we pay for those things, but it's been a real struggle with people not wanting to put a mask on or wanting to abide by those policies. We've even gone so far as to provide free masks when people walk in, but there's still people that don't want to put them on.”
It takes a particularly hardcore type of anti-masker to infringe on the policies of an otherwise popular All-American, red-blooded establishment like Patricia’s, but the store owners are not backing down, and neither have sales.
“We have not had to close a store because we couldn't staff it because there was a COVID outbreak,” added Lozano. “I think that's a huge testament in today's environment, because so many stores have had to close because of a COVID outbreak in the store. I think a lot of that is having your people know that you're supporting them, no matter what they need or what it’s going to take. We can continue to do that, and when our customers come into our stores and see the signage of mask requirements and social distancing and sanitation stations, they also know that as prohibitive as that might appear, it also is for their benefit and for their safety. And yeah, I think that's one of the contributing factors to these astronomical sales that we're seeing right now, people feel safe and comfortable coming into the stores.”
At Pepper’s, they did not close the main store before being required to do so, but as Pepper explained, “We started with all of the sanitation and safety measures. We're not taking temperatures at work, but we are asking our employees to take their temperature at home before they come to work. And then they have to sign a piece of paper that says all the things like, I've not been traveling, I don't have any symptoms, yada, yada.
“We started talking to staff about safety measures very early on, and we put our testers away right away and we still put our testers under glass containers so that the customer can still look at the product and ask to see it one at a time. And then, sex toys were never meant to be cleaned by Lysol, but by God, we clean them with Lysol every time someone touches them. Even if it's just us that picks it up and touches it, it still gets sanitized with Lysol.
“But one of the most successful things I did was I forwarded all the phones, everything, to my cell phone,” she continued. “Yes, ma'am. And the original store is still forwarded to my cell phone so that I can talk to people. Once you can talk to people, then you can make sales. So, what we would do is we would take their orders over the phone, we stopped our drop shipping, and we became the drop.”
Other panelists also experienced increased sales amidst the mayhem. “Certainly, our web sales during the shutdown were exponentially higher than they were prior to the shutdown,” said Morgan. “As I mentioned, our website was always kind of clunky, it was always an afterthought. Previous to the shutdown, we would have maybe two or three orders a week from it. That's how slow it was, because in-person experience is really what we do and what we're known for. All of our good reviews mention that everybody is knowledgeable and helpful and pleasant and supportive. So, we've been trying to recreate that experience for people who are online, and it’s a lot of work.” She also has all calls forwarded to her phone, “so that if for whatever reason it’s busy in the store, after the fourth ring, it goes to my phone so that I can answer it.”
From two to three orders a week, the store is now getting at least two to three orders a day. “And some of those orders are pretty sizable,” she added. “Once that pandemic aid came in and people had more money and stimulus checks to spend, where previously our online orders might average $25 to $50, during the pandemic, our online orders average $100 to $300. To lose the thousands of dollars a day we get from being open was difficult, but that certainly helped us to survive. And unfortunately, even though other adult stores did get payday loans and stuff like that, for whatever reason, we applied for dozens of them and we didn't get any of that money. But because we also have a clothing store, we applied for and we got a business loan, and that is what kept us in business and able to pay all the vendors, without having that money for March, April, May and June, we would have had to shut our doors.”
Passional did not experience the exponential increase in sales some others did, but “we are going steady, we curtailed our hours, and we really honed-in on our procedures and on communicating what we believe to be the best practices for every person who comes in, whether they're an employee or a customer. Everyone gets temperature checked, every person signs off that they’re going to keep their mask on their nose and mouth before they even get in the door.”
They even provide customers a bag in which to place any items they may touch for later disinfecting, but that only goes so far. “With clothing, it's virtually impossible to keep track of all the hangers that somebody may have touched,” noted Morgan. “This really allowed us to make the labor-intensive prospect of cleaning everything that could potentially be breathed upon or touched a lot more containable. Also, no shoplifting.”
For Lozano, the uptick in sales was more than uptick. “Uptick in sales is putting it mildly,” she said. “Almost immediately, when we opened, and in all our localities, the malls and the shops and the theaters and everything were all closed. And so many of the restaurants were either closed or they were on severe restriction, so people didn't have anything else to do, and that was a part of it. Across the board, in all 16 stores, we kept hearing customers come in and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I've never been in a store like this before.’ So, we began with a whole new customer base, and you know, when you provide the right things to the customers, where they have a safe environment to shop in, they don't feel overwhelmed by things.
“So yes, we have broken [sales] records at every single store, even at our most challenged store, in Champagne, Illinois, a college-based store. When they closed the campus, and didn't allow incoming international students, that cut our potential customer base by a significant percentage. But we continue to do well because we picked up some new customers.”
It dwarfs even the Fifty Shades of Grey surge they experienced several years ago. “We're breaking all kinds of records, and it's across the board, not one single department. Our average sale has increased by 30 percent. Keli, you brought this up, that your average sale was higher, and I think that part of that is, for example, when you go to the grocery store right now, you don't want to go three or four times a week, you want to go once a month, because you buy a whole bunch more stuff. And I think that's reflected in our average selling price, too.”
Pepper experienced a similar bump in sales. “Yes, our online sales were definitely increased when our doors were shut,” she said. “I would say that our online sales are still higher than they were in 2019, but once we were able to open our doors, that’s when our sales went crazy. It was like Valentine's Day. Also, our store usually has a little bit of a dip during the summertime as people take vacations and things of that nature. This year, they didn't take vacations. They had a few extra thousands of dollars that they would have spent on their vacations, So, we saw sales increase. We usually see a little bit of a dip whenever school is starting as well, but people weren't buying as many school clothes. So, we didn't see that dip. Then our Christmas was the third-best we've had in at least the last three years, and last week, we had a killer weekend. Saturday night was the highest sales we’ve ever done on that day. It was the extra stimulus, that’s what’s going on. People have some extra money.”
Airs interjected, “One thing I’m hearing from people is that they’re doing killer business selling stripper poles. Everybody figures it's because the strippers aren't working in the clubs, so they're doing that to stay in shape at home. And there's actually some strippers that are doing online strip shows, and the clients pay to see that. I think that's a brilliant thing to do. And so, stripper poles, which I heard were hard to get from the distributors for a while. So, go figure, as we say.”
With that, there was just enough time to take a question or two before ending the Zoom meeting on time. One viewer asked a great question about warranties in the age of COVID. To a person, the panelists said they were not offering product returns through the store but were expending extra effort helping people manage manufacturer warranties.
In all, attendees got a clear-eyed look at what a great sampling of novelty and sex toy retailers have experienced over the past year. Even though the seminar topic was on what comes next, the panelists were all still in the middle of implementing policies to keep them going for now and into the future, whatever comes next.
“We're trying to be by example, in spite of [COVID], and I feel pretty confident that we're going to survive it,” said Morgan, “but I do feel that if there's another pandemic, a super coronavirus, that we really need to just buckle down as a country and do a better job of actually containing the virus quickly, because it is painful to withstand this! Big box stores have not had to withstand anything like it.”
