Pictured (front left): Ryan DiMartino, a general manager of The Pleasure Chest; King Noire, co-owner of Royal Fetish Films and his co-owner, performer and therapist Jet Setting Jasmine; Andy "Educator Andy" Duran of Good Vibrations and Babeland; Iuana of Iuana Exotic Fantasies; Nicole Grossman of CalExotics; and Beth Liebling, owner of Darling Way Boutique in Houston.
Adult stores and even stores that aren't "adult" under local statutes often have the same problem: Customers are increasingly shopping online, even though store owners and clerks are only too happy to help their customers choose the sex toy or other item that's best suited to the customer's needs. Hence, the ANE panel "Cultivating Inclusive Retail Spaces" brought together store owners, manufacturers and others familiar with adult retail to discuss how best to gain and retain in-store shoppers.
Moderated by AVN's Sherri L. Shaulis, the panel featured Nicole Grossman of CalExotics; Iuana of Iuana Exotic Fantasies; Andy "Educator Andy" Duran of Good Vibrations and Babeland; Ryan DiMartino, a general manager of The Pleasure Chest; King Noire, co-owner of Royal Fetish Films and his co-owner, performer and therapist Jet Setting Jasmine; and Beth Liebling, a former attorney, owner of Darling Way Boutique and "life, love and sex coach" based in Houston, Texas.
Shaulis began the discussion by asking the panelists to define the word "inclusive" when it comes to making retail outlets customer-friendly. DiMartino jumped in with a fairly long explanation, defining the term as "creating an environment where everyone who shows up in the space is seen as engaged with, where folks' experiences and input are valued and weighed together and where we are not only making an effort in that moment to make sure everyone is able to participate, but that we're also mindful of the history of everything: the history of power dynamics and axes of oppression and identities that show up and that influence the way that people are able to take up space when they're invited into a room, and that we actually do something to compensate for that, to address that and to make sure that people are empowered to be seen, to be heard and to have an impact on what our next step is as we move forward."
DiMartino then went on to talk about the importance of pleasure, which she said was "foundational ... in creating a world where people are more healthy and more functional and better able to live together; a piece of how we change the direction of where everything is going... in a way that is mindful and gives people power."
Noire's answer was both simple and direct: "I look at inclusivity as just that—you're including people and not pushing people out"—though he expanded on that to include "all kinds of body parts, all kinds of colors, all kinds of ways for it to be used regardless of orientation."
"Inclusivity for me is a pre-thought, it's not an afterthought," noted Jasmine. "Inclusivity is really taking our achievements and putting that into the concept of whatever product or service you offer."
Duran, however, felt that the concept is only a start, and that other components such as "action, representation, [and] doing the research to be familiar with the community" need to go along with that. He stressed the importance of community outreach.
"When you're in business, you have to be very openminded," Iuana, who had just reopened her business, stated. "You have to know how to cater to everyone, not just what you like, and I educated myself in how to be more openminded, know how to cater to clients, know how to make everyone feel comfortable ... More people are being more open about their needs, and I want to be able to cater to that."
"At CalExotics, we try to be as inclusive as possible," noted Grossman. "We have products that range all over the spectrum. We want people to be able to come to CalExotics and find anything that they want, regardless of their sexual orientation, their gender, anything."
"We only have about 1,000 square feet in our cottage that is our shop, so there is no way we can have products for everybody," admitted Liebling, adding, "I don't think you have to do that to be inclusive. My version of inclusivity is an open heart, and whoever walks in the door, I tell them, I judge by consent. As long as there's consent, even if what turns you on is crazy to me, and we celebrate the differences. I don't want to overlook them; I want to celebrate them. Nobody laughs at anybody in my shop; we laugh with each other ... Ultimately, inclusivity comes down to love."
Shaulis then directed a question to Grossman about CalExotics' attention to physical disabilities and its use of women in the design process, and she responded by noting that the company tries to "offer a world of pleasure ... Whatever you want, we're there for you and we are here to help. That's at the heart of CalExotics ... We have on-staff experts and we really go into the community and try."
Shaulis noted that smaller stores face greater difficulties than larger ones, in that they are often unable to stock as wide a selection of products, and can't afford to hire enough staff to serve everyone's needs. She then asked the panel how they are able to overcome such problems, most notably the cost of having a diverse stock?
Jasmine noted that she and King travel the world advising store owners, especially those serving people of color, on how to be creative on a small budget, but also advised them to make room in the budget for consultants and speakers who would make the different customer communities more comfortable.
Liebling stated that the three most important words she knows in business are "I don't know."
"Those words will save you over and over and over; they'll save you from lawsuits, they'll save you from angry clients, and truly, when it comes to inclusivity, they save us from hurting people's feelings," she continued. "If we don't try to bullshit, we just say, 'I don't know. But you know what? Let me find out. Let me get some resources. Let me educate myself. Thank you for bringing this up.' ... So being that forthright and appreciative is something that can endear you to people even when you've just overlooked that aspect of training."
"If you have a small business and you're trying to find ways to be inclusive, you have to be creative," advised King Noire. "First of all, don't try to be creative by doing the most stereotypical thing possible ... Usually those first ideas are the worst ideas, so you should think about the buying power of the different communities that are out there, because it's stupid to ignore trans folk and the LGBT community, the black and brown community, because there's money out there ... You should find ways to make people feel comfortable when they come into your business ... You might want to have some pictures of people on the walls that will actually make people feel like, 'Oh, yeah, I can shop here; I'm safe here.'"
DiMartino also had a few suggestions, including looking at inventory as "an assortment of tools to accomplish different outcomes ... Rather than looking at this vibrator and saying, 'Well, this is a product for women,' what I actually know is that this is a product for someone who wants vibrating stimulation, and If I just remove that label from this product—'This is a women's toy'—now I'm like, 'This is a toy that does this thing,' and if I change the way that I communicate about this product to everyone and say, 'This is what I have for people who want to have this experience,' anyone who wants to have this experience doesn't have to talk to me about their identity; they just need to talk to talk to me about the experience they're trying to have with the product, and I can probably meet them there."
She went on to advise that store owners think deeply about all the ways they can be inclusive in how they treat and talk to their customers, as well as in their the choice of which speakers to bring in for in-store forums, and opined that such openness to various forms of sexuality is a prime ingredient in attracting customers.
Duran added to DiMartino's thoughts, stating, "This is a reminder that we don't know the identities of the people who walk in the room ... A lot of time, it's just reframing the language that we have come up with. We were just having a discussion about pronouns, and how it would be great to have them on badges so that trans folks don't always have to be the ones letting you know that, 'Hey, that's not actually my pronoun.' ... We just want to create a world where everybody feels comfortable, and there are more people in the world who are speaking out about feeling uncomfortable ... We have a large variety of people who have needs, whether they're emotional, physical—we all need to respect them ... There's a sex educator who talks about how everybody wants to feel safe, sexy and seen, and I think those words are very important."
In that same vein, Leibling raised a point about semantics.
"One of my little pet peeves—and this is about inclusivity—I take sexy stuff seriously. To me, it's my heart, and the word 'toys'—when we say 'toys,' there's a part of me that always goes 'Eewww,' like we're making it a little bit less than," she said. "It's kind of like if I told you I have a toy blender, right? I'd feel like a little kid who couldn't really use the important products yet. I think 'passion props'; everybody should have a prop closet... I think we lessen by our use of 'toys,' and I really advocate for taking a more serious approach and saying they're props: Passion props, pleasure props, whatever it takes, but something to be proud of, something to take care of and something meaningful."
At this point, Shaulis jumped in with a few points she wanted the store owners in the audience to think about, such as that "Some of the easiest ways to be inclusive are to do away with 'products for men,' 'products for women'; just do like 'butt toys' and 'vibrating things'; find new ways to just get creative in your own space. Same products, same space, same shelves, just group them all a little differently. Also, workshops is another one, whether it's manufacturers coming in or sex educators coming in, use the resources that you have. Ask your distributors what they can help you with, what they can teach you. A lot of distributors have online courses now. Work with your manufacturers ... Make sure your staff is inclusive as well."
She noted that recently, the North Carolina branch of a major retail chain was sued by a man who applied for a job in the store, and was told, "We don't hire men."
"Their excuse was, it makes the customers uncomfortable," Shaulis reported, adding, "There was a time when we had what were called 'raincoater stores,' and they were at or near truckstops, had sticky floors, video booths in the back, but we became this industry where we were like, 'No! We're women!' And the majority of the industry is created for women and we are women and let's be women. Are we at a point now where we're excluding some people just because they [men] held that space for so long?"
This gave Duran an opening to mention that the organization he works for, Good Vibrations and Babeland, were both founded by women as a safe space for women to shop.
"Most women had reported in their women's sexuality group that they didn't feel safe going into a traditional dirty book store," he said. "This was 1977 when our company started ... We wanted to be a safe space for women because women didn't feel safe, but who else doesn't feel safe? One of the things we notice in the early days of Good Vibrations was that men wanted to come into the store too because they also didn't feel safe in the stores that were out there for them. That was an eye-opening experience."
Liebling noted that both her son and daughter-in-law work in her shop, and "We find that women may come in and my son will tell them, 'If I can talk to my mom about this stuff, then you should be able to talk to me about it.'. .. Safety is about who you're speaking to; it's not about whether I have three ear piercings or three tattoos; it's 'Do I have a heart that's willing,' basically; 'Am I going to share my heart with you?' and vice-versa. That's what we're shooting for and it makes all the difference in the world."
"At The Pleasure Chest, we have a team of staff who, when anyone walks in, they introduce themselves and say, 'I'm a sex educator here; I'm trained on anything in the store and I'm prepared to help you'," DiMartino said. "Not only is it important that your team is well-trained, but that you hire all kinds of people to work with you so you have a multitude of experiences and perspectives that can be tapped into to help whoever walks through your doors... At Pleasure Chest, we ask, 'How do I also make this sexy? How do I find a way to be inclusive, to be disarming, to challenge stereotypes, to challenge people's archaic ways of thinking that is exciting and sexy, and the way we're often successful in doing that is by bringing sexuality back to behaviors, making no assumptions and showing people how much they stand to gain when they let go of the things that make them uncomfortable or hesitant to engage with us in the way they were trying."
DiMartino went on to reference a workshop her stores hold called "Squirt Shop," about G-spot and prostate play. "It teaches those things simultaneously and it's quietly teaching people, 'Hey, your bodies are more alike than they are different. Hey, if you meet somebody and you're really into them and it turns out they're trans and their genitals maybe don't look like you were expecting, that's OK; you're going to be able to engage with them.'"
Shaulis then threw the floor open for questions, and the first was how store owners should deal with disabled persons?
Liebling noted that since her business is housed in an old cottage with what she described as a "not very rickety ramp," but that even people with physical disabilities, even those in wheelchairs, manage to enter her store, and "We make up for what we don't have in terms of polish or finish with kindness ... We tell them, if you want to call next time, if you know what you want, let us know and we'll bring it right out to you." She also noted she has seating (and wine and sodas) for customers' relaxation.
Jasmine noted that though she doesn't have a store of her own, she often offers services at others' stores, and she seeks out stores that are ADA compliant. For online customers, she provides educational materials on her website. She said she also does a lot of education regarding post-injury intimacy as well as lessons in good bedside and "storeside" manner.
Duran agreed that those methods are good, but urged store owners to think more expansively about what it means to be disabled.
"When we're thinking about people with disabilities, we should not just be thinking about people in wheelchairs," he said, "[but also] folks with mental illness, folks that have other types of chronic pain that affect their sex lives. We work with Kaiser, Blue Cross, lots of different hospitals to specifically help with different patients or to be a referral for their patients to come in, whether it's folks going through chemo, people experiencing vaginismus, early menopause; I do workshops for the Center for the Blind, and we do hands-on workshops together, which are a lot of fun. We're constantly reaching out directly to providers" to make it easier for their patients to have their sexual needs met.
Another question asked how retailers can help the technologically challenged navigate some of the newer, tech-intensive sex toys?
Grossman answered that CalExotics offers a series of product demonstration videos, though noted that there can be legal difficulties in being too explicit: "I can't tell you where to put it, but I can tell you how to turn it on," but added that, "We offer a product demonstration video for every item that vibrates or has some sort of mechanical movement ... and in addition, we provide extensive product information."
"We are lucky to have vendors come to our stores and do product trainings with our staff," Duran noted, "because the last thing you want is for an employee to try to show how simple a product is and not know the controls." He also noted that not everyone needs a high-tech gadget: "I have a colleague who still uses a Jitterbug phone, and that's totally fine."
Finally, Shaulis gave each panelist a chance to provide the audience with contact information for themselves and their businesses—but that didn't stop audience members from crowding the stage after the seminar was officially over for some one-on-one interaction.
