Everything is not always rosy at Dirty Gloves Inc. , but that doesn't stop officers Dravyk and Electra from finding humor in almost any situation. On the day we spoke, Dravyk had just returned his brand-new main computer - a custom designed high-dollar box - to the manufacturer, having only recently retrieved it from the repair shop after a series of malfunctions, and was currently reduced to working on a laptop computer that wasn't equipped for his needs.
"I have some data here, some data there, and some more over there," he says, chuckling as if the situation didn't represent a problem for someone who creates software programs and builds Websites for a living. "None of it is accessible, of course.
"I was trying to get away from buying from the big guys [like Dell, Gateway, Sony, etc.]," he explains, "so I decided to work with a smaller company that builds machines from the ground up exactly the way you want them - only it didn't turn out exactly the way anybody, including them, wanted."
If, as the Scottish poet Robert Burns claimed, "The best laid schemes o' mice and men often go awry," then Dravyk would have to agreed that this incident was certainly one of those cases. After returning the previous machine to its manufacturer, Dravyk ordered yet another custom-built computer from a big company that promised to deliver it in three to five days. Two weeks later, he still doesn't have it, but he's hoping it will arrive soon so things can get back to normal. "Well, as ?normal' as they ever are," he says, laughing.
"Of all the things to get jinxed over," Electra exclaims. "The amazing computer saga from hell continues. I may as well write March off as the most unproductive month of this year, even though we somehow got a major software program revision out during this time." She and Dravyk admit that they may have been jinxed in the computer arena from the get-go, but they remain good friends with the owners of the computer company despite the mishap.
It's easy to like Electra and Dravyk. They're intelligent, friendly people who laugh - a lot. Dravyk is the outgoing, chatty one, and Electra is a bit more reserved, almost shy, and deferential to those around her. That might be a product of her British upbringing, although when one comments about her charming English accent she is quick to point out cheerily, "I'm an American citizen, and I'm very proud of that."
Dirty Gloves is headquartered in New York, where Electra lives and works as the company's financial officer. She describes herself as "the detail person" of the operation. Dravyk, whom both call "the idea man," lives and works in Philadelphia, where he cares for his elderly mother. The two meet face to face about once a month to discuss current projects and plans for the future. Long-distance arrangements are nothing new for the pair, who met in the mid-1990s on a computer bulletin board service (BBS) bearing the name Real Exposure and based in New York. They laugh about how far they, their business, and technology have come since those days, when everyone was happy chatting electronically on BBSes that offered 16 dial-up lines to users whose modems maxed out at speeds of 9600 kbps.
Although Real Exposure offered sanctuary to both adult and mainstream users, Dravyk and Electra didn't become involved in the burgeoning adult Internet industry until 1998. Dravyk jumped in first, in January, and Electra followed several months later.
"I did some mainstream design work [before going into adult]," Dravyk says. "Then I showed Electra the Internet, and together we created and ran TowerOfLondonTour.com," a mainstream Website Electra continues to operate. "When I left mainstream, I started this adult site called The Tasty 10; it was my first free site as a newbie. It had 10 niched images that changed weekly. It was a niche site - and that was before there were niches."
In 1998, Dravyk went to work as an editor and "official" for what was then called The Condom Project. He founded the Condom Chronicles, which was the first and, at the time only, online news publication for the adult Internet industry. "It was the progenitor for YNOTNews, Rookie Class, DFN Weekly, and all things later to come. We announced content releases and new sponsor pay sites, linked to mainstream news that affected adult Webmasters, offered a weekly cartoon, developed the 250-by-250 banner ad format.... There was much more we created there that has since become adult industry standard," he says.
When Dravyk lost a columnist for the weekly publication, Electra was the first person he thought of to fill the vacant spot. "That's how he got me into adult," she says, giggling. "I really didn't think I was going to stay, but I'm still here."
By the end of 1999, Dravyk and Electra had left The Condom Project (by then called Netpond), filled with ideas and enthusiasm for the future. It was time, they decided, to see if they could make their own concepts work. Both took part-time jobs in the adult industry - Dravyk with InsiteAdult; Electra with Sharky Live (which later became Webmaster Live) - biding their time until their own fledgling adult Internet company grew big enough to fly on its own. Their first adult Website as a team was Free Porn List , which debuted in 1999 and continues to be a thriving traffic engine for free adult Websites. All of 'Em , for which Dirty Gloves is perhaps best known, debuted in July 2000. Like many of the company's projects, it evolved out of Dravyk's and Electra's frustration with other resources available to the adult Net industry.
"The boards were getting out of hand," Electra says unabashedly. "There were so many of them, and every time you turned around, another was popping up. Everyone was very confused with all the products out there."
The All of 'Em staff reviews the larger mainstream and adult news Websites, publications, Webmaster resource sites, and conversation boards that "have been in existence for a while or are doing unusual things; something Webmasters can use," Electra says. All of that information is organized and presented to Webmasters in easy-to-use digest form, with appropriate links to the source material.
"It's always a challenge for us," Dravyk admits, but the process seems to be working.
"Now people keep coming up to me and saying 'We only get our news from you,'" Electra says, fairly glowing with pride in the company's well-received endeavor.
Dirty Gloves, which incorporated in 2000, is an incredibly busy, though still relatively small, enterprise. The company owns and operates not only Free Porn List and All of ?Em, but also "several hundred" surfer-oriented sites (both free and AVS-protected), content sites like XXX Erotic Stories , the six-days-a-week double-opt-in newsletter All of 'Em to You , and two other Webmaster resource sites: Paysite Owners , and Free Adult Webmaster . Recent additions to the Dirty Gloves stable include software projects like Content God . Future plans include the debut of several surfer-oriented adult pay sites, two software sales sites for multiple products, and some as-yet-undisclosed mainstream Internet projects.
"We've always wanted to do mainstream," Electra reveals. "In fact, that's where both of us started. When we first started our own company, we wanted to call it Clever Gloves."
Dravyk, a U.S. native, interrupts: "'Clever' is a very British term, and it's a positive thing."
"Like, 'Oh, aren't you clever clogs?'" Electra interjects, reclaiming the conversation with what could only be interpreted as a vocal wink. "Anyway, we decided we wanted to name the company Clever Gloves. Then we decided, 'No, we'll keep that for mainstream when we get back to it,' but we needed a name for the adult company. Somehow the 'clever' gloves got all 'dirty'...."
However the company's name came about, its motto certainly fits: "Our fingers are into a little bit of everything!" Diversification and variety are keys to their success, the pair says.
Dravyk and Electra don't do everything alone. Dirty Gloves employs eight staff members and several subcontractors scattered around the globe: in California, Illinois, Canada, England, Germany, Russia, and Australia, at last check.
"Plus we're working Webmasters ourselves," Electra is quick to point out. "We can do anything we ask our employees to do."
Dravyk adds, laughing heartily, "Yeah, we have to roll our sleeves up, too. We both do ?grunt' work, marketing, and brainstorming. Fortunately, she helps keep me grounded. I come up with 500 ideas, and she tells me we can only do three of them."
Content God - a Website content manager, organizer, viewer, database, search engine, and gallery and site creator all wrapped into one neat little Perl-encoded package - is Dirty Gloves' current "big project." Now in version 2.5, the program is being re-worked from the ground up for version 3.0, which is scheduled to be available in late spring or early summer.
Dravyk says one of the hallmarks of Dirty Gloves is that the company doesn't allow anything to get old and stale. "Content God and All of 'Em both are undergoing major upgrades," he says, noting that an affiliate program for Content God is in the works as well. "We don't just make something and then leave it alone to let it atrophy. Gotta keep it fresh."
Then he laughs again - but that's to be expected. Doing something you love and doing it well enough to make a good living at it is enough to bring a smile to the most jaundiced of souls. That the Dirty Gloves folk can laugh loud and often is testimony that they've found a space that's uniquely theirs, and love every minute of their residence therein.
