BURBANK, Calif.—At this year’s Adult Novelty Manufacturers Expo Founders Show, two educational seminars sponsored by AVN explored how retailers can grow their businesses and how the novelty industry can navigate age verification compliance.
The first seminar, “Increase Your Retail Knowledge for Brick and Mortar Stores,” took place on July 13, 2026, at the Los Angeles Marriott Burbank, before the start of ANME. It was moderated by AVN’s Pleasure Products Contributing Editor Kim Airs, who led panelists Ero-tech Technology and Analytics General Manager, Zondre Watson; Dick & Jane’s Naughty Spot owner David Eliason; and sex educator Javay Frye-Nekrasova in a wide-ranging discussion of the ways retailers can use artificial intelligence tools, customer education, and strategic sales to boost their bottom lines.
Watson shared how AI can assist brick-and-mortar store owners in improving workflow, making their businesses more productive and more profitable. “This isn’t Skynet,” he said, referencing the artificial superintelligence system in the Terminator franchise that nearly wipes out humanity. “It’s much more like an assistant—like when Neo got taught how to do kung fu” in The Matrix. With the help of AI chatbots—Watson’s mostly uses Claude—“Your computer can run your business for you.” He has relied on AI to reorganize adult toys on display shelves, analyze profitability reports, create purchase orders, check store inventory, and compare year-over year growth, giving him time to focus on other things.
For Eliason, AI improved a planned billboard for one of his South Dakota stores. When he handed his design over to AI, the chatbot produced a superior version that took into account that most people reading the billboard would be in their vehicles and traveling down the highway at eighty miles an hour. He’s also leaned on AI to create employee schedules in “less than a minute” and redesign a retail shelf sign to list the benefits of water-based lubricants. “We’re still playing, we’re still exploring, but there’s really no limit.”
Airs then turned the conversation to three opportunities for customer education in any adult store: the G-spot, anal, and BDSM. To demonstrate how stores can educate customers on the G-spot, she produced a Wondrous Vulva Puppet and talked the crowd through female anatomy. Next, Frye-Nekrasova discussed lubricants and toys that are specifically for anal sex and offered suggestions for how employees can help customers looking to explore. When it comes to BDSM, retail stores can offer workshops on kink and drive in-store sales with limited-time coupons. “It’s another revenue stream,” she said. “Most kinksters don’t want to buy their shit from some random place on the Internet.”
The second seminar, “AV and the Novelty Industry Legal Panel,” was held the following morning, on July 14, 2026. Again, Airs moderated, and while Free Speech Coalition Board Chair and First Amendment attorney, Jeffrey Douglas, was unable to attend, Eliason took Douglas’ place—alongside Free Speech Coalition Membership Director Meghan Lyon and GOAT Payments Senior Account Executive Lucy Luna Trim. The panel chat focused on age verification, banking and payments, and risk and liability.
As far as age verification, Airs said, “It used to not be a big deal.” Increasingly, though, as age verification laws are established on the state level, retailers, manufacturers, and distributors are finding themselves having to understand the ramifications. And the risks aren’t limited to adult video content sites. “People think, oh, it’s just the porn part,” she said. “No, no, it goes farther than that.” Age verification laws impact everyone.
Currently, more than two-dozen states have age verification laws, Lyon said. When adult website visitors must provide their government-issued identification or a selfie to verify their identity, Eliason said, “Your privacy is virtually nonexistent.” Additionally, age verification laws are written with vague and ambiguous language by design. “It’s written to be as broad as it can be so the government can do that it wants.”
Interestingly, Airs said adult retailers are seeing an uptick in adult video DVD sales “for privacy issues.” Today, some consumers who want to avoid giving up their privacy to comply with age verification laws are gravitating towards analog formats.
At the same time, adult retails may encounter banking discrimination by banks and payment processors that deem their businesses “high-risk” and have rules on the types of products for which they will process payments. Specialized payment processers like GOAT, Trim said, could help sellers that other processors reject and can be an alternative for business owners who have been blacklisted by the banking system.
“We are fighting in several states to change the language of age verification laws” and for the rights of adult retailers, manufacturers, and distributors, and sex educators through the Free Speech Coalition and its Sexual Wellness Professional Alliance division, Lyon said. In Washington, D.C., they’re talking to leaders and legislators about changing the legal obstacle course faced by those who work in the adult space.
This spring, the Free Speech Coalition launched PrivateAV, a private, compliant, and affordable age verification service for its members. Instead of turning to another age verification service, members can use one that “supports us, the industry.”
“The brick and mortar stores are the boots on the ground” for the opportunities and obstacles faced by adult entrepreneurs, Airs said. So it pays to listen.
Photography by Jeff Koga
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