From party planning to retail empire, Peekay's online world keeps the company on the cutting edge.
If you work in the online adult industry, you’ve likely heard the name XXXpressToys.com, but that retail site is only a small part of a multifaceted empire that company founder Phyllis Heppenstall has built in the Pacific Northwest. Those entities include the Peekay retail arm, which includes 31 brick-and-mortar stores in Washington and California; PK Wholesalers, the company’s wholesale operation that was launched in 1985 and later went online at PKWholesalers.com; its own sex toy lines—the best-known of which, the Sutera line (SuteraToys.com), launched in 2005; and, of course, a hearty online presence that in addition to those sites mentioned above, includes AdultToyChest.com, AdultGayShop.com, and two adult e-card sites.
Retail, wholesale, manufacturing, e-commerce does it get anymore well rounded?
All of this comes from a woman who began selling dildos from her basement 25 years ago. Heppenstall decided she wanted to try adult party planning, visited Los Angeles from her Auburn, Wash., home to purchase a bulk order of adult novelties, went home, and started selling them. That was 1981. Today things are a little different.
Heppenstall, who built Peekay largely with the help of her family (her daughter Kris Butt is a partner in the company), no longer runs the day-today operations of the company. Instead, her focus remains on her company’s position in the marketplace. Foresight brought Peekay this far, but what started the ball rolling was its market-changing focus.
“Our focus was women and couples. Why should we be closeted, and why should we be ashamed of where we shop? To bring that model into the bedroom communities and make it okay for couples—that’s been a mantra for us and still is,” Heppenstall said in March, when Peekay celebrated its 25th anniversary.
“Back when we opened our store, there wasn’t really a clean environment for couples to shop, so we really pioneered that boutique store. People from all over have copied our stores, and I think that’s the greatest sign of success.”
Success' new medium
As anyone who works in the online space can tell you, brick-and-mortar operations typically don’t “get it.” In this industry, some of the most successful brick-and-mortars, and some of the largest brands, have left truckloads full of money on the table for years because they didn’t understand, didn’t care about, or mismanaged their Web presence. That makes Peekay stand out even more.
Peekay launched its XXXpressToys affiliate program around late 1996/early 1997. Although there wasn’t much competition at the time, with approximately five similar sites, Heppenstall calls the launch “a little late.”
A little late? If you’re used to cutting your own path through the jungle of adult retailing with your own machete, perhaps you’d feel a little funny treading a path that already has been used by a few others.
Regardless of whether it was late, early, or just in time, XXXpressToys has fallen upon the same fate as just about everything else Heppenstall touches: crazy success (not to be confused with stupid success). Like everything else the company does, Peekay’s online endeavors are closely managed.
“Our affiliate program continues to stay very, very strong. One of the things I think all of us discovered over the past 10 years, is there is a different customer on the Web. The typical Web consumer is not the typical person who walks into our stores. There were lessons for us to learn on how to market,” Heppenstall says.
“We’re committed to the Web, the affiliate program, and selling online.”
In other words, if you’re thinking about entering the online adult retail realm, well, XXXpressToys and Adult Toy Chest offer affiliate programs.
Although the company didn’t build its empire in it, the online world plays a very important role in the Peekay vision.
A wolf among the sheep
Its contemporaries are often content to look at what each other is doing and either (A) copy it or (B) try to better their competitor’s mousetrap. Heppenstall, whose roots are in mainstream business, looks a bit farther ahead than her adult competitors.
Considering the bulk of those competitors are years behind in the online game, that’s really no surprise. It says something about the company’s philosophy, though.
“Strategically, the Web plays a very important role in our business. We’re focused on the fact that the Internet is here to stay,” Heppenstall says. “Internally, our primary focus is how we can leverage the Web with brick-and-mortars. With 30 stores, we’re always looking at what other good retailers are doing, not just what our industry is doing. The benchmarks are the frontrunners on the Web, whether it’s Victoria’s Secret or Petals and Pets.”
In addition to its affiliate sites, Peekay also has used the Web quite effectively to cross-promote the company’s individual store chains. Southern California-based chain A Touch of Romance, which has eight brick-and-mortars, is online at ATouchOfRomance.com. Washington based Lovers Package, a 16-store chain, is online at LoversPackage.com. The company’s signature store, Amour on the Boulevard, is online at AmourBlvd.com.
You get the idea. Obviously, this online business is a well thought-out strategy.
“Does the Web give us an advantage over our competitors? If we’re looking at our retail stores as an adult store site, very definitely,” Heppenstall says.
“We’re pretty competitive in driving traffic from the stores to the Web and then driving traffic from our websites back into our stores. I think it gives anyone who uses technology a competitive advantage.”
If you look at the sites for Peekay’s retail outlets, they aren’t much different than going to Home Depot or Wal Mart, except for the products, of course. They’re easy to navigate, feature specials and sales, make it easy to buy, and make it easy to find any of the company’s physical locations—if you’re the type that needs to hold the lingerie up against your body before you buy it.
Trials and errors
I suspect, simply because you took the time to read this, that you’re not ignorant, so I won’t insult you by trying to paint a picture of success from day one forward.
Peekay has taken its lumps in the online world along the way. After all, we’re talking about brick-and-mortar retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers. Historically, you didn’t do those things outside of quaint storefronts and big warehouses.
When Peekay entered the online realm, it was a time of great fear in the brick-and-mortar realm. Would online suck the customers out of the stores? Could profit margins be maintained if sites were launched? What if we have lower prices online and someone buys something online only to return it to the physical store for a larger refund?
No one really knew the answers to those questions, but as Heppenstall says, Peekay decided it was better to give the Web a shot and deal with the problems as they cropped up.
“A lot of people were scared to embrace the Web,” she says. “To be competitive on the Web we have lower prices on the Web. We’ve not thrown caution to the wind, but I think we’ve taken a lot of bold steps. We’ve said lets not worry about solving the problem until we have that problem.”
Through a little tweaking of the business model here and there, the answers to the questions everyone was asking 10 years ago aren’t nearly as bad as people had feared.
Still, and it’s probably no surprise that Peekay has found the online world to be more competitive than the company’s other areas of expertise.
“There are a lot of people focused 100 percent on Web sales, and they’re willing to take a lot less margin,” Heppenstall says. “We’re really good retailers, and that’s where our focus has been. So, it’s more competitive on the Web for us.”
Competitive or not, Peekay has proved that it’s no flash in the pan. For those in the brick-and-mortar world still wondering about the online world, well…
Pictured: Phyllis Heppenstall (top center) and the Peekay team: (l to r) Kris Butt, Brian Barnett, and Rick Barnett.
