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ASB Dec/Jan 2007

What does Valentine's Day mean to Distributors?

by Christopher Buttner

alentine’s Day is quickly approaching and if you haven’t started planning by the time this article comes out, then it’s still not too late to get a good head start and implement some of the advice garnered from leading adult novelty distributors from across the country.
   I interviewed an interesting group of professionals and I received honest answers and commonsense advice that is sure to improve every retail store’s operation. Overall, Valentine’s Day has become the number one selling season for the adult novelty industry, exceeding Christmas sales by, in some cases, 20% to 30%, or more, and according to one savvy distributor, Christmas actually comes in third place as the most important holiday, trailing Halloween!
   These well-respected pros were all very forthcoming and honest in their assessment as to what makes the Valentine’s Day holiday so special, and what makes an adult novelty store a success during the Valentine’s Day season.
I spoke with Tony Rankins, Sales manager with Adult Supersource; Bonnie Feingold, President of Honey’s Place; Bo, Director of Sales and Marketing with East Coast News; Desiree Duffiy, Director of Marketing and Public Relations with Topco Sales; and Lance Garland, President of Eldorado and Connie Daegas, Sales Manager with Eldorado.

   My first question was to determine the importance of the Valentine’s Day Holiday, therefore, I asked, “what sets Valentine’s Day apart from the other big holiday, Christmas?”
   Bo at East Coast News states, “Most people think that Christmas is the big season, but quite frankly not too many people give the one they love a vibrator for Christmas. They give them a gift of true caring at Christmas. It’s Valentine’s Day that is really the peak season in the adult novelty industry, only because it’s wide open now. It’s that time of the year when what you used to buy was subtle, now you can turn up the sexual nature a bit in the gift giving department.”
   Desiree Duffiy of Topco points out, ”People’s imaginations are what limits them and this is the time of the year where inhibitions are greatly reduced and people are open and want to try new things with their partner. Not many people go with the standard old box of chocolate and roses these days, now that there are adult novelty products on the market that will allow you to smear chocolate all of your lovers body so you can lick it all off.”
   Tony Rankins of Adult Supersorce adds, “The fact is Valentine’s Day is more personal of a day. People do things that are more intimate and sexual. You really don’t associate sex toys with Christmas, because Christmas is more family oriented, where Valentine’s Day is a couple’s holiday based on love, intimacy, sexuality, eroticism and fantasy. In my case, it’s my wedding anniversary, so it has an even greater intimate meaning.”

   “Let’s talk money and sales. How important is Valentines Day to your overall annual sales? What kind of sales spike do you see in comparison to your average sales and then the next major Holiday, Christmas?”   “Valentine’s Day, from the novelty end of the business, is 20% to 30% greater in sales volume over Christmas,” states Tony Rankins of Adult Supersource. “The business growth starts to kick in late October and can go out to tax season in mid-April.”    Bo from East Coast News states, “Females purchase further out from the Holiday, and have a tendency to buy throughout the season, while males are always last minute. The business for novelty shops is strongest from November through to March, as this always seems to be the real growth season for the industry as a whole. To say that Valentine’s Day can do 15% or better in sales then Christmas is not unrealistic for even the not-so-well managed stores.”   Larry Garland of Eldorado adds, “Valentine’s Day exceeds Christmas, in fact it’s the number one Holiday for us, making January and February our two strongest sales months of the entire year. Additionally, Halloween is strong for us, as well, even better than Christmas, because not only do we distribute adult novelties and romance items, we also distribute a wide variety of Halloween and erotic costumes. Valentine’s day exceeds Christmas by easily 20% or more.”    Bonnie Daegas, Eldorado’s sales manager adds, “The next most important holiday to Valentine’s Day is Halloween, since we sell so much in pre-packaged erotic costumes and lingerie, from stockings to erotic Bugs Bunny and Superman costumes. We’re unique in that respect that not many other distributors carry costumes. Therefore, in terms of sales importance and peaks, it’s Valentine’s Day, Halloween and third place is Christmas.”   To fail to plan is to plan to fail, so a store owner has to first know who’s driving the market during the Valentine’s Day season and what are the products that are being sold? “Therefore, first, who’s your customer at Valentine’s Day?”   Bo at East Coast News states, “The one thing I know is over 46% of the women in America openly talk about and admit to using vibrators, so you can see right off the bat, almost 50% of the buying public is going to be female wanting to purchase products for female sexual satisfaction.”    Continuing, Bo states, “In the old days, a husband or boyfriend would go to a ‘book store’ and buy a classic white, hard plastic vibrator. These days, the market has opened up so much. Women have preferences on the material, colors, and features, and there are countless specialty items, such as G Spot or clitoral stimulation-specific toys. The average guy would never be concerned about the material composition of a product, the chemicals in the materials, which is something that everyone worries about these days, or the type of materials, such as jelly, cyberskin, latex or silicone. All of these changes to the products and the industry, they have come from female demand.”    Desiree Duffiy from Topco states, “I see the sales going more towards the ladies these days, that’s so true, but couples products are incredibly popular at this time of the year as well. Topco offers a lot of products and kits that are specifically designed for couples, and licensed products from Penthouse, such as the Couples Collection, that contains something for him and something for her, as well as the Hustler product, My First, which is designed to help the couple indoctrinate themselves to the use of adult toys. Adam and Eve has something for everyone with their signature toy line, from those couples that are just beginning to discover the world of sex toys to those who have been using them for many years.”    Tony Rankins adds, “Women drive the adult novelty business more than men in general, while men drive the adult video business. Women, especially drive the couples oriented product sales at Valentine’s Day, such as massage oils, kits, games, feathers, and other ‘soft’ products. Men will invest in something that he and his lady will use on Valentine’s Day in a romantic and intimate setting. Overall, the bulk of the product sales are the warm and fuzzy, girly-girl items overall.”    Continuing, Tony states, “Truly, women are driving the adult novelty business overall by over 50% of the customer make up, even closer to 60%, because the stores have so dramatically changed and improved in the past few years from the dingy and seedy book adult stores to some pretty impressive retail environments that women find very welcoming and safe. As an example, Good Vibrations, The Hustler Hollywood Stores and in Pleasanton, California, a store called Secrets, are all incredibly impressive retail environments. It’s not unusual to be in Secrets at any given time of the day or night and find only female shoppers. Also, you tend to have higher ticket sales and repeat business with women. Men are repeat buyers, as well, but they’re mainly coming in for adult videos.”

   “And, what items are the most popular gifts for Valentine’s Day?”   Larry Garland laughs and states, “Anything that’s red is always popular. A lot of consumers during Valentine’s Day purchase couples products, lotions and lubes, but also couples-oriented vibrators and toys, as well, but more towards the softer end of the market. We also distribute the widest variety of couples games, the subjects of which are either romance, intimacy and nurturing games or party games.”    Bonnie Feingold of Honey’s Place agrees, “More female friendly, for sure. Lubes, lingerie, and then there are the vibrator sales, but we tend to sell significantly great numbers of the cuter and more female-friendly/oriented products, aka: soft products.”   Bo says, “Lover’s Choice Products, such as the Bed of Roses, but the Lover’s Choice product line overall is a very good seller, as are Kama Sutra products. The softer stuff, female-driven, all do well, but we do well on all products, such as the Waterproof Pocket Rocket and Jack Rabbit both give us high sales. That would be the same with lingerie and fashion, such as crotchless panties. You don’t really get the new stuff moving as much, because the core items really move at that time of year.”    Tony Rankins states, “Novelties, lubes and vibrators are the big core selling items, and when it comes to vibrators, that part of the business has really changed because of the technological advances that have been made in vibrator technology, such as different speeds, actions, waterproof, material composition, computer controlled and wireless operation. Wireless remote controlled vibrating panties are a fun item. The man is holding the remote control in his pocket controlling the vibration and she can be sitting there at a restaurant table with a very happy look on her face as she’s getting buzzed.”    “Men also tend to buy softer items, as well, and I’ve found that sometimes, depending upon the store, 75% of the time a man will buy a kit or game to set the romantic moment.”    Bonnie Daegas of Eldorado adds, “Valentine’s Day is the lover’s time of the year, and anything sexual, erotica or couples-oriented all sell very well. We experience huge peaks at this time of the year, moreso than Christmas, but Halloween has become incredibly huge, with so many of our retailers carrying erotic lingerie, shoes, costumes and related items like erotic props. Popular Products: Kits, lotions, couples oriented products, as well as pre-packed lingerie for women and briefs for men. Most of it is on the romantic couples side of the fence.”

   Preparation for the Duration… “How far in advance of the Holiday should the store begin its inventory purchasing and preparation?”   Larry at Eldorado states, “If you’re talking about Valentine’s Day ordering specifically, place orders no later then right before Christmas so you’re getting the items in quickly with enough time to have your store merchandise for the Valentine’s Day holiday by the beginning of the year.”    Connie at Eldorado even more succinctly states, “What I recommend and what retailers do are two different things, but it seems that 90% of the retailers get right on it after Christmas. The balance will order pre-Christmas.”   Desiree Duffiy states, “The standard is to start preparing and purchasing at least six months in advance for not just for the Valentine’s Day, but the entire season including Christmas, in order to really be on top of it.”      Tony Rankins says, “Adult Super Source is unique in that it also owns over 45 retail stores throughout Northern California and Hawaii. The manager in each store handles inventory control because what could be popular in the suburbs of Sacramento or the town of Livermore in the East Bay, will not be popular in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. You have to rely on the manager in the store who understands his customers’ interests and needs. Adult Supersource also sells to a multitude of other independently operated stores, as far away as the east coast and Puerto Rico, but we also service retail accounts in Europe. Therefore, we do have a leg up because we have a built in sales analysis with our own stores, so we can integrate and assimilate all of our sales analysis from our entire customer base in order to have a real good feel as to what items are popular in every marketplace.”   “You have to start purchasing no later then the middle of November,” continues Tony. “Our customer appreciation party is the last Friday of October and that’s when retailers from all over the Bay Area come visit our warehouse in South San Francisco and begin stocking up on products for both Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Retailers who wait for our customer appreciation event to purchase inventory get a head start on the competition because they’re in the right place at the right time to secure extra inventory at the right prices early on, compared to those retailers who’ll wait till late in November or even December to start purchasing Valentine’s Day inventory.”    Bo at East Coast News states, “Christmas time is a good time to get a feel for what you should be stocking up on for Valentine’s Day. The one thing that’s nice about this time of the year is the season is stretched out to the retailer’s advantage. They can start test marketing the newer items that they might have been skeptical about before Christmas. By ordering as early as October and November and testing the products up to Christmas to determine how well they go over with the clientele, in order to determine how much more they should invest in for Valentine’s Day. What’s key here is how well the employees are selling those items. If the owner can get the employee to sell a product properly, in the November season, then they’re going to move the products more effectively during the height of the buying season, Christmas through Valentine’s Day.”    Bo adds, “A product like the Cone (www.conezone.org) from Twisted Products, which is on the market in the UK, but which hasn’t hit the US market yet, is a great example of something that could really take off during the Holiday season. If stores start to show it in late November and December, it could be huge by Valentine’s Day. It’s an absolutely fabulous product and one of the hotter items on the market.”

   “Since we don’t live in a perfect world, what are the most common mistakes a retail store will make when preparing for a Holiday buying season like Valentine’s Day?”   Bonnie Feingold states, “Mistakes are waiting till the last minute to order, not ordering enough and not taking into consideration your clientele or knowing who your customer is in order to order the right products.”    Bo at East Coast News agrees, “Ordering too late, not ordering enough, being out of touch with your customer base and immediate marketplace and being too hesitant to go into the full Christmas and Valentine Day season are the biggest mistakes.” But, Bo also points out, “Another really huge mistake is sometimes when things are going good with a store, they’ll take the chance of revamping their entire store floor layout approach to the season at the season. For example, if it’s a store where people are used to seeing a certain line of products and then next time they go in, it’s all changed over and rearranged with other items that the clientele are not used to seeing, it can have a detrimental effect on sales.”   Elaborating, Bo states, “If an inventory is 70% dildos and you scale that back 30% and introduce lingerie thinking you’re going to make a killing, it could backfire on you if you do it at the wrong time of the year. For example, a store with a great core business in video sales and rentals from an 80% male customer base wants to increase female clientele. You don’t change from book store mode with a huge male video rental clientele to emporium mode, trying to attract more females during November and December, because such a drastic change could make the core customer base uncomfortable, thereby adversely effecting video sales. A store profile and image change has to be very well thought-out and during the Holidays is not the time to implement such changes.”    Desiree Duffiy states, “Have your game plan in order, which includes pre-marketing for Valentine’s Day, inclusive of preparing the store so all the POP displays are filled, the store has enough inventory, to decorating the front window – if applicable – to attract exiting and new customers and get them thinking about Valentine’s Day as far ahead of the Holiday, as possible. Also, ask your distributor about specials and even advice as to how to make the season more profitable.”    Tony Rankins adds, “A big mistake it to not have a good feel for your own customer base. If you have an existing store and you want to purchase from Adult Supersource, I’m going to want to know your demographics. We want to create a win-win situation that’s going to be best for the retailer. It doesn’t make sense for us to sell a retailer an item that will not sell through. Nobody makes any money and the customers don’t return.”    Continuing, Tony points out, “By the time the Holidays of Christmas and Valentine’s Day rolls around, you want to have all the bugs worked out and if you’ve planned everything correctly, you should be on automatic pilot through the Holidays. If you’re going to make modifications to your floor layout or point-of-purchase displays, you should have it completed, or you should be completing that at the beginning of the season so if there are any bugs, you can find them and correct them within a week into the season. When the season kicks into gear and you’re deluged, hopefully with customers, you’re going to find you won’t have the time to make corrections to those experiments that are not working. Another thing you don’t want to do is run out of merchandise. Order early and make sure your automated reorder system is in place and working, so you’re reordering and getting deliveries of merchandise before you run out of anything.”
   “What are a few important pointers for a store to enjoy a profitable and successful Valentine’s Day selling season?”   Larry Garland states, “Buy early, promote and cross promote with other complementing companies in your community, such as florists and candy shops. That’s a great creative way to cross merchandise, you just need a little imagination, but doing so helps all businesses involved.”    Bo from East Coast News states, “Invest in the smaller ticket items, aka: stocking stuffers. The regular mark-up could be two and a half to three times, but during the Holidays, the mark-up could be five to six times on these emotional buy, knee-jerk impulse items. Impulse buying is at its peak, especially during the Valentine’s Day season. Items, such as small vibrators, The Screaming O Vibrating Cock Ring, clit creams, and other items in pop-up, silent-salesman counter displays or fishbowls can increase sales dramatically. Things at the magic price points of $4.95, $9.95 and $19.95, that would never sell well during the rest of the year, some of the stupidest things in the world – the wind-up fucking couple toys - once they’re on the counter at this time of the year, they sell very well. Plus, people are sexually experimenting at this time of the year more than at any other time, so creams, lubricants, mini vibes, and other small female-oriented items on the counter, do very well.”    Tony Rankins states, “There’s a lot of correlation between Christmas and Valentine’s Day, and they are close together, so you want to purchase items that work for both Holidays as far in advance as possible. Also, take into account that right after Christmas is when people have the most amount of disposable income from the receipt of cash gifts, so this is a fantastic selling time, as well. Make sure you have enough products not just for before Christmas, but also after Christmas through to Valentine’s Day.”    Tony continues, “The smartest thing a retailer can do is take hints from leading mainstream product retailers. When we started to redesign our stores and front windows, we hired someone who had once worked for Macy’s and specialized in window displays. When we began our store transitions, we implemented the best ideas of mainstream retailers, such as Walmart, and integrated these techniques into the way do business in our stores. The thing of it is; if it works for Walmart, it’s going to work for your store, as well. Ever notice all the things a Walmart crams up near the check-out? You don’t want these areas of emotional, last-minute items to look junky, you want them to be organized so someone can quickly look them over and quickly find extra add-to-the-sale items right before check out.”    “We’re in a touchy/feely business and if these displays are organized correctly and conducive to allowing your customer to pick up, feel the item and hold it in their hand for a minute, you’re going to dramatically improve your chances that they’ll buy more products.”    “In adult stores,” Tony states, “the customers are always on a mission. If you make the item accessible, you improve the chances of selling faster. If they can pick up three of four similar items, many times they’ll make the decision for themselves and buy something after doing their own investigation. In the old days of adult novelty, everything was in cases. You had to look at everything through glass and the clerk had to hand it to you. People have their inhibitions about asking to see a sex toy if it’s behind glass in a store. Even drug stores have moved condoms out from behind the counters into accessible aisle displays and we’ve seen those sales increase exponentially. In this day and age, the more obstacles you put between the product and the customer, you really hamper the sales process and your chances of selling the item decreases dramatically.”

“With the nature of this business, the easier and more comfortable you make the experience, the greater the chances of the person returning. Look how successful Good Vibrations has become.”

Connie Daegas adds, “Retailers should be really smart about their marketing and advertising. But also a smart retail manager will work with his staff and train them on suggestive selling in order to accessorize the sale. If a customer is buying a vibrator, they should be buying lube and the salesperson should suggest accessories that will complement the main item purchase. There is a prime time to do that and it’s when the customer has made their decision to purchase the major item. Your sales person has to have a list of four or five accessory items to suggest for that expensive vibe that the customer is about to purchase, such as extra batteries, lube – water-based or silicone-based lube – condoms and sex toy cleaner. Add extra items to make the main item a nicer, more thoughtful gift. A lot of sales people simply forget to add on items to the main sale and that hurts your bottom line. There are so many items that can be added onto any sale, I can’t begin to start going through all of them. Accessorize the sales builds your sales overall.” “And the rest of the year?” Bo from East Coast News adds this bit of wisdom, “One thing the store should do from March to the end of the summer is continue to build up a loyal clientele. Run programs where you capture the customer’s email address, send out e-newsletters during the year about specials, run ladies nights where you can introduce new inventory, and the spring is when many weddings take place, so don’t forget about bachelor and bachelorette parties. Really stay on the customer’s radar all year long by being creative. Also if the store is considering an image change, the best way to do that is by slowly introducing such a change through these marketing methods beginning in March.”

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