A welcoming home page, slick design and plenty of browsing options give HoneysPlace.com the feel of a high-end adult novelty retail site—a friendly spot where even a newbie would feel comfortable shopping for her first sex toy. But despite its consumer-friendly face, HoneysPlace.com is a wholesale distribution and drop-shipping company, dedicated solely to providing top service to adult novelty retailers around the globe.
Honey’s Place was founded in 1994 by Helene Kusens, mother of the current owner, Bonnie Feingold. Kusens had years of experience as a sales rep in the adult business when the company she was working for went out of business. So she started up her own enterprise, Honey’s Place, in a former beauty shop in Los Angeles.
As a small boutique-style distributor, Kusens carved out a niche for herself by focusing on customer service. And not just any customer service—she would go to stores and help the retailers think strategically about their clientele. Her advice on redoing wall displays, making the atmosphere softer and more inviting, and following trends in the novelty business had clients coming back to Honey’s Place again and again.
When Kusens passed away in 2002, Feingold took over the reins, expanding on everything her mother started. One of Feingold’s biggest projects was the creation of the aforementioned website.
“Our wholesale site is finally complete. We built it from scratch,” Feingold said. “I really tried to think of our clients. At Honey’s Place we deal with retail stores of all kinds: lingerie, adult, smoke shops and home-party companies. We’ve also worked a lot on our drop-ship program over the last two years, as well as shipping internationally. That’s been part of our growth—and stepping up to the plate to make sure that they get what they need.”
Honey’s Place staff members keep up Kusens’ tradition of hands-on customer service, visiting stores, doing over-the-phone consultations, and using their state-of-the-art computer system to help stock new stores. “Everything from how we fill orders, our fill rates, listening to the clients in the products that they want us to carry—everything we do, we try to do state-of-the-art,” Feingold says.
Because the last thing a buyer wants to do is go through a cumbersome ordering process, one priority for the website has been to make ordering and reordering as simple as possible. With the quick-order option, customers can duplicate an old order, use their past buying history to build a new order, or even send over a budget and let the staff pick out the products that will work best for the buyer’s store.
“Sometimes we have stores that call us up and say, ‘We’re opening a new store and have a budget of $5,000. Can you make up an order for us?’ ” Using Honey’s Place’s robust computer system, sales reps can run many different reports, allowing them to produce sales-boosting lists that tell buyers what sells best within a certain price range. The system also facilitates creating orders with a variety of price points, a certain mix of vendors, or many other attributes.
Feingold is a self-proclaimed perfectionist, and she demands nothing less from the systems on which her company is built. The website—revamped after almost eight months of hard work—is completely integrated with the state-of-the-art internal computer system. Inventory is dynamically updated, allowing the stores to know exactly what’s available for purchase, and the infrastructure is constantly updated to keep up with the ever-changing trends in technology.
Another area of expansion for Honey’s Place was new product lines. “We recently brought in lingerie and a lot of boutique brands. Those little companies can really help to make your store different from the store down the street.” And if Honey’s Places doesn’t have a particular item, Feingold said, “We’ll do everything that we can to get it for you, if you request it.”
Before anything new is added to the distribution lists, the entire team comes in to look over the goods. Among the products that recently passed muster with this tight-knit and experienced sales team are new lingerie lines, organic and phthalate-free products, and toys from LELO and other high-end manufacturers.
“Right now we are focusing on expanding our lingerie selection as well as adding new unique toy brands. Video sales have dropped for most retailers, so these are nice fill-in products,” Feingold said.
The sales team is another great part of this family-owned business. Every salesperson knows the products through and through, and frequent training sessions keep them up to date on adult novelty trends. “We have an extremely good team, and our people really know their genres. Our sales people … know what they’re doing,” Feingold said. “I’m very lucky to have such great people here.”
With business booming, Honey’s Place has moved twice in the past six years—and its growth rate doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. The wholesale site offers everything that an adult novelty store can possibly need, from detailed product descriptions to the stellar customer service that has earned many loyal clients over the years. Feingold reaffirmed the company’s mantra: “At Honey’s Place, our business is your success.”
For more information, visit HoneysPlace.com or call (800) 910-3246.
This article originally appeared in the October issue of AVN.
