Sportsheets: A Family Whose Business is Vanilla Bondage Equipment

When Tom Stewart, a former Marine helicopter pilot, first started selling the Sportsheet, a Velcro bedsheet, he wasn’t comfortable telling his family that he was now hawking a product that he had designed for the safe and easy restraint of sexual partners.

Ten years later Stewart is the president of a company that has more than 180 products. He readily credits his sister with leading the company to fiscal viability, hires his father as a managerial consultant, and has a brother-in-law who distributes his products.

Stewart developed the Sportsheet while he was still in the military, inspired by a David Letterman episode. When he left the service, he decided to give his invention a shot and started Sportsheets International Inc, though it was slow going at first.

“We were getting one account at a time. We started selling at conventions, then to stores. Each account that we got was a giant breakthrough,” Tom remembered.

Then Julie Stewart, 16 years younger than Tom, learned of her brother’s new enterprise from one of their sisters. Bored with Alaska  (a post-collegiate search for adventure that didn’t pan out), she offered to move to California to help him out.

“When Julie came down from Alaska we had 10 accounts receivable phone calls to make and 40 accounts payable phone calls to make. What we owed was twice what we had coming in,” Tom said. 

“It was really just a matter of balancing the checkbook. And saying no when we had spent too much,” Julie said.

Julie agreed to take some accounting classes at a community college so she could help get things organized. That’s where she met Dawn Kirchofer. “She was the best in our class. I kept telling Tom about her and so he hired her,” Julie said. Kirchofer currently serves as the general manager of Sportsheets.

Julie’s business education didn’t stop at community college - she went on to earn an executive MBA at Pepperdine Univeristy in 1999 (she’s one the youngest people to graduate from that program,” Tom proudly notes) and is now the vice president of Sportsheets International, Inc.

Julie’s business knowledge wasn’t the only thing that was growing – the Sportsheets’ catalog was expanding even faster.

“We started offering sports cuffs, blindfolds, tethers. As we brought out more and more products we got more and more customers,” Tom said.

And as Sportsheets grew the Stewarts turned to their father, a retired management consultant, for advice. He currently works with them four times a year. “When we have managerial problems he helps us with techniques and management functions. We never had that type of training, so having the benefit of his 50 years experience is invaluable,” Tom said.

Of course, it’s not just the family that has turned Sportsheets into a successful company – there’s also an innovative product line designed for a largely overlooked market – the “vanilla bondage” crowd.

“We’re not so extreme. Being restrained is a big fantasy. Whatever it is about being tied up reaches a lot of people, but not everyone wants to experience the extremes of that fetish. We’re a ‘vanilla’ version of bondage,” Julie explained.

With that in mind, Sportsheets’ packaging is designed to attract the vanilla bondage crowd. “A lot of our photos show the women in the dominant position. If the guy takes it home, the woman won’t be offended by it and if the woman is doing the shopping she won’t be intimidated by it,” Julie said.

As with any company, there have been a few mistakes at Sportsheets along the way - items like leashes and collars and a faux fur mitt have flopped when sold solo. But unlike most companies, Sportsheets was able to turn a high percentage of their failures into hits. “When we put them into a package, like our Valentine’s kit, they do well. We’ve found that kits do very well. While they might not have thought of using a leash, once one of the kits is bought, they find that they have a use for one after all,” Julie said.

“A kit is really just an overall concept for a night’s entertainment,” Tom added.

And kits are among the most popular items the company offers. In fact the most popular Sportsheets product since its debut seven years ago is the 7 Piece Fantasy Kit, which includes two pairs of Neoprene Cuffs, a Leather Blindfold, and a pair of 48” adjustable Tethers; the Ostrich Feather Ticklers and the Latex Rubber Whips. 

Sportsheets’ latest successes were debuted at this year’s ANME: the Door Jam Cuff Set and The Corsette Harness. 

The Door Jam Cuff Set includes a pair of cuffs that attach to straps with tubes that lay over the top of an open door.  When the door is closed, the tubes hold the straps in place and create an easy restraint to secure the cuffs. 

“It went out the door at an amazing rate. We were just ‘oh my god!’ when we looked at the numbers,” Tom said of the Door Jam Cuff Set.

The other big hit this year was the Corsette Harness, pitched as  “a fusion of function, fashion, and fetish.” The back is styled like a corset and outlines the wearer’s ass in the shape of a heart. 

“The whole shape and design of all these harness have been the same for 20 years. The Corsette Harness adds a sexier dimension and it’s been doing very well,” Julie said.

But the Sportsheets’ product line as a whole can be boiled down to this: quality products that aren’t intimidating to use.

“We wanted to make quality products that were accessible for beginners and we’ve made them for the general public to enjoy,” Tom said.

And that’s how a company that started as one man selling one product has blossomed over the last decade into a company that employs 35 people and sells over 180 products, with plans to add a limited number of unique items every year, expanding their catalog slowly. “This makes the stores happy to see new items and keeps the distributors smiling, as they don’t have to make room for hundreds of products every six months,” Julie noted. 

And somehow Julie managed to nurture a relationship while helping her big brother develop his adult novelty company, a relationship that led to her marriage this past August to Ed Hayes, general manager of ADI Novelties.

While she admits having met Hayes on a professional basis, at a convention she can’t really remember, Julie insists of keeping her personal life separate from her professional life. She even continues to use her maiden name.

“It’s a delicate balance to make sure that no one is talking shop at the family dinner table. There’s nothing that is more of a turn-off than industry pillow talk when you’re married,” Julie admits.

Distributors who would like to order the Sportsheets’ catalog can call 1-800-962-4606 or go to www.sportsheets.com