Marche’s decision to aim his dildos at a female market was a bold move
December 23, 2017 4:03 PM Subscribe
Before sex toys were a click away on Amazon, they were a product that few took seriously. Once only the domain of porn purveyors, in the 1960s dildos were poor quality devices available only on the floors of sleazy XXX stores. But one man gazed at the floppy rubber phalluses and saw a business opportunity.
He realized that dildos were in need of a makeover: If they were made with high quality materials and manufactured on a large scale, they could be big business. The pioneer of such dildos was an unlikely sex-toy hero: ventriloquist Ted Marche.
Excerpted from Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy by Hallie Lieberman.
Excerpted from Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy by Hallie Lieberman.
One of the first dirty jokes I heard as a much-younger sobsister:
Q: How do you make pickle bread?
A: With dill dough.
A sheltered child, I had to think about it for a while.
posted by the sobsister at 4:25 PM on December 23, 2017 [17 favorites]
Q: How do you make pickle bread?
A: With dill dough.
A sheltered child, I had to think about it for a while.
posted by the sobsister at 4:25 PM on December 23, 2017 [17 favorites]
Plastisol? That’s what common heat-cure t-shirt printing inks are made of- PVC, with a plasticizer, to make it flow. They’ve been phthalate free for the last 10 years or so, & I have no idea how that works chemically any more. Still, I’ll never look at a bucket of ink quite the same again.
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:39 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Devils Rancher at 4:39 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
I was just in M's in Akihabara yesterday. There, a LOT of things are not taboo. I expected to see sheepish dudes, giggly groups there as a dare, and the rebellious aggressively sex-positive-as-a-schtick folks. Nope. Normal people. Couples looking over and discussing butt plugs, vibes, and anal beads like buying a new coffee maker. That place was making SALES. 7 floors, cash register with a line of people waiting on each floor.
posted by ctmf at 4:44 PM on December 23, 2017 [22 favorites]
posted by ctmf at 4:44 PM on December 23, 2017 [22 favorites]
He saw a niche and he filled it.
(I am sorry.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:29 PM on December 23, 2017 [68 favorites]
(I am sorry.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 7:29 PM on December 23, 2017 [68 favorites]
well over a decade ago now, a buddy of mine who'd been the initial drummer of a band I was in in the late nineties called me to say that he'd wrangled into Amazon's launch program for third-party sellers and that he was drowning in orders. Could I come help?
We rented an unheated underground floor of a parking garage, under a warehouse, next to I-5 off Airport Way South, and shipped several million dollars worth of sex toys to eager Amazon customers over the next few years. At one point we bought two tractor-trailer containers which were full of abandoned but new-in-box chromed vibrators that all resembled small artillery shells. We had to clean the horrible warehouse dust off each boxed unit before we shipped it out.
The guy that sold us those containers was a lifer, a sex-toy wholesale specialist, who had a road territory that included Vegas and Los Angeles. He was in his sixties and dressed like a caricature of Stan Lee in the 1970s.
The job was physically terrible, because overnight we'd become an independent Amazon distribution center before Amazon even had localized distribution centers. It was also incredibly difficult to work with Amazon at first - inital third-party sellers were perceived within Amazon as a threat to the consumer-satisfaction brand and category managers had the administrative power to arbitrarily suspend merchants based on nebulous criteria, which in our case often amounted to "we do not want sex toy sales in our product category" and were usually founded in an internal business misalignment at Amazon, such that category managers were bonus-incented to interfere with third-party sellers in order to protect Amazon-sourced product sales.
We ran the business like this with no more than three total workers including both of us for about five years. Dealing with Amazon, especially at first, was the worst business experience I hope to ever have.
Eventually, Amazon stopped giving us static and we branched out into other product areas. I left and went on my own but selling in a completely unrelated product category. That went great until it did not. I still do contract marketing for third-party sellers and wholesalers in the Amazon platform.
On the whole, I can't really recommend online sextoy sales to anyone as a career path.
It was very interesting to watch the product and package design change over the period, moving from "novelty" designs seemingly intended to appeal to a drunk 19-year old male sailor on leave for the first time, to packages clearly intended to appeal to a midlife female demographic. We fondly characterized this re-envisioned consumer as "your mom," and really, honestly, tried to interact with our customer base with that idea in mind. Everybody needs lovin'.
posted by mwhybark at 7:31 PM on December 23, 2017 [54 favorites]
We rented an unheated underground floor of a parking garage, under a warehouse, next to I-5 off Airport Way South, and shipped several million dollars worth of sex toys to eager Amazon customers over the next few years. At one point we bought two tractor-trailer containers which were full of abandoned but new-in-box chromed vibrators that all resembled small artillery shells. We had to clean the horrible warehouse dust off each boxed unit before we shipped it out.
The guy that sold us those containers was a lifer, a sex-toy wholesale specialist, who had a road territory that included Vegas and Los Angeles. He was in his sixties and dressed like a caricature of Stan Lee in the 1970s.
The job was physically terrible, because overnight we'd become an independent Amazon distribution center before Amazon even had localized distribution centers. It was also incredibly difficult to work with Amazon at first - inital third-party sellers were perceived within Amazon as a threat to the consumer-satisfaction brand and category managers had the administrative power to arbitrarily suspend merchants based on nebulous criteria, which in our case often amounted to "we do not want sex toy sales in our product category" and were usually founded in an internal business misalignment at Amazon, such that category managers were bonus-incented to interfere with third-party sellers in order to protect Amazon-sourced product sales.
We ran the business like this with no more than three total workers including both of us for about five years. Dealing with Amazon, especially at first, was the worst business experience I hope to ever have.
Eventually, Amazon stopped giving us static and we branched out into other product areas. I left and went on my own but selling in a completely unrelated product category. That went great until it did not. I still do contract marketing for third-party sellers and wholesalers in the Amazon platform.
On the whole, I can't really recommend online sextoy sales to anyone as a career path.
It was very interesting to watch the product and package design change over the period, moving from "novelty" designs seemingly intended to appeal to a drunk 19-year old male sailor on leave for the first time, to packages clearly intended to appeal to a midlife female demographic. We fondly characterized this re-envisioned consumer as "your mom," and really, honestly, tried to interact with our customer base with that idea in mind. Everybody needs lovin'.
posted by mwhybark at 7:31 PM on December 23, 2017 [54 favorites]
On the whole, I can't really recommend online sextoy sales to anyone as a career path.
So PHE Inc, parent company of Adam & Eve and at least at the time probably the largest sex-toy seller in the US, is headquartered in Hillsborough NC, near Durham and Chapel Hill. As you might expect, they were pretty much always hiring in one department or another. And academic life is hard, and lots of jobs out there suck, and I otherwise had a decent enough life in NC. This led to an important decision point when applying for jobs:
Would I really, honestly, rather have this job, or would I rather just stay here and pack dildos for a living?
There really were, for real and no-shit, jobs I didn't apply for because of the Dildo Criterion.
A friend later actually did work for them for a bit on the phones, and said that the worst part was the occasional person trying to use it as free phone sex.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:07 PM on December 23, 2017 [24 favorites]
So PHE Inc, parent company of Adam & Eve and at least at the time probably the largest sex-toy seller in the US, is headquartered in Hillsborough NC, near Durham and Chapel Hill. As you might expect, they were pretty much always hiring in one department or another. And academic life is hard, and lots of jobs out there suck, and I otherwise had a decent enough life in NC. This led to an important decision point when applying for jobs:
Would I really, honestly, rather have this job, or would I rather just stay here and pack dildos for a living?
There really were, for real and no-shit, jobs I didn't apply for because of the Dildo Criterion.
A friend later actually did work for them for a bit on the phones, and said that the worst part was the occasional person trying to use it as free phone sex.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:07 PM on December 23, 2017 [24 favorites]
I keep coming back to the phrase "aim his dildos" and
posted by The otter lady at 8:43 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by The otter lady at 8:43 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Signior Dildo
--John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, first published 1703
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:58 PM on December 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
--John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, first published 1703
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:58 PM on December 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
Will you buy a fine dog ventriloquist dummy?
posted by tclark at 9:16 PM on December 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by tclark at 9:16 PM on December 23, 2017 [2 favorites]
Everytime I see an old porn and the dildos in them (I'm talkin' vintage 60s/early 70s) the big long nasty horribly rigid looking plastic bakelite shit, I'm like man, that was some bad sex toyage in the day.
Now I can see the history of how it got to be not as nasty.
Actually, those dildos in those films are like the sex toy equivalent of those cooking recipe books with bad recipes made with fruit and gelatin.
posted by symbioid at 9:19 PM on December 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
Now I can see the history of how it got to be not as nasty.
Actually, those dildos in those films are like the sex toy equivalent of those cooking recipe books with bad recipes made with fruit and gelatin.
posted by symbioid at 9:19 PM on December 23, 2017 [3 favorites]
> Ursula Hitler:
"He saw a niche and he filled it.
(I am sorry.)"
Why?
posted by Samizdata at 9:25 PM on December 23, 2017
"He saw a niche and he filled it.
(I am sorry.)"
Why?
posted by Samizdata at 9:25 PM on December 23, 2017
Why?
Presumably for the somewhat corny pun.
posted by fifthrider at 9:40 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Presumably for the somewhat corny pun.
posted by fifthrider at 9:40 PM on December 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
Some puns are hard to grasp and even harder to take in.
shame? heard of it
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:42 PM on December 23, 2017 [26 favorites]
shame? heard of it
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:42 PM on December 23, 2017 [26 favorites]
Honestly I'm still trying to work out what pickle bread has to do with this
posted by Merus at 10:05 PM on December 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Merus at 10:05 PM on December 23, 2017 [4 favorites]
Would I really, honestly, rather have this job, or would I rather just stay here and pack dildos for a living?
While apparently very specific to your situation, this is a rule with general application I intended to make use of.
posted by vorpal bunny at 10:06 PM on December 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
While apparently very specific to your situation, this is a rule with general application I intended to make use of.
posted by vorpal bunny at 10:06 PM on December 23, 2017 [8 favorites]
Honestly I'm still trying to work out what pickle bread has to do with this
Yeah, me to. Is it like a toasted cheese sandwich with pickles in it? That I get.
posted by unliteral at 2:30 AM on December 24, 2017
Yeah, me to. Is it like a toasted cheese sandwich with pickles in it? That I get.
posted by unliteral at 2:30 AM on December 24, 2017
Doh! Dill pickle *slaps forehead*
posted by unliteral at 2:33 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by unliteral at 2:33 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
My youngest brother was the shy-est, withdrawn online gaming otaku living on little more than Coke and I really worried for his mental health (and vitamin D levels) for years. At 18, he went back to Japan to rediscover his roots (having been born there) and I figured he’d just loaf around for a bit before returning to the safety of his mum’s cooking.
After some years drifting between intermittent translation jobs (to pay for the gaming time) he got an unusual request to apply his talents to the manual for a new, up-market sex toy. That was well over a decade ago and he’s now their main product manager and surrounded by a great group of coworkers who really seem to look out for each other and care for him. Watching him talk about the product on TV spots around the world, his gently confident nonchalance is hilarious when I think of how his otaku-era self would have run a mile from anything remotely erotic. I’m both glad and relieved that he’s happy, social and secure.
Basically, I’m eternally grateful that a sex toy helped my li’l bro’ bloom.
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 3:53 AM on December 24, 2017 [31 favorites]
After some years drifting between intermittent translation jobs (to pay for the gaming time) he got an unusual request to apply his talents to the manual for a new, up-market sex toy. That was well over a decade ago and he’s now their main product manager and surrounded by a great group of coworkers who really seem to look out for each other and care for him. Watching him talk about the product on TV spots around the world, his gently confident nonchalance is hilarious when I think of how his otaku-era self would have run a mile from anything remotely erotic. I’m both glad and relieved that he’s happy, social and secure.
Basically, I’m eternally grateful that a sex toy helped my li’l bro’ bloom.
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 3:53 AM on December 24, 2017 [31 favorites]
Doh! Dill pickle *slaps forehead*
I see what you did there :)
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 4:07 AM on December 24, 2017
I see what you did there :)
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 4:07 AM on December 24, 2017
Why?
Presumably for the somewhat corny pun.
Sorry if I was being a tool. I didn't mean to rub anybody the wrong way. I admire this guy. Back when nobody else was thinking about sex toys for women, he established a booming lady business.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:14 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Presumably for the somewhat corny pun.
Sorry if I was being a tool. I didn't mean to rub anybody the wrong way. I admire this guy. Back when nobody else was thinking about sex toys for women, he established a booming lady business.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:14 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
On the whole, I can't really recommend online sextoy sales to anyone as a career path.
I have some friends who have apparently done very well out of this, over the last (I think) four years. This is in Australia though. I gather they basically test everything they sell, and then dropship it, so most of their work is in the website, and the testing.
They're happy to expound, but I wish they'd tell me more about the website side.
posted by pompomtom at 6:11 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
I have some friends who have apparently done very well out of this, over the last (I think) four years. This is in Australia though. I gather they basically test everything they sell, and then dropship it, so most of their work is in the website, and the testing.
They're happy to expound, but I wish they'd tell me more about the website side.
posted by pompomtom at 6:11 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
I keep coming back to the phrase "aim his dildos" and
No one wants an unaimed dildo.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:12 AM on December 24, 2017
No one wants an unaimed dildo.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:12 AM on December 24, 2017
jobs I didn't apply for because of the Dildo Criterion
The Dildo Criterion. Wasn't that a Matt Damon flick?
posted by flabdablet at 6:20 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
The Dildo Criterion. Wasn't that a Matt Damon flick?
posted by flabdablet at 6:20 AM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Dildo criteria are what separate your dildos from your dildon'ts.
posted by condour75 at 7:07 AM on December 24, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 7:07 AM on December 24, 2017 [8 favorites]
The Dildo Criterion. Wasn't that a Matt Damon flick?
I don't know if Robert Ludlum parody erotica is a thing, but it should be.
posted by Dr Dracator at 7:27 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
I don't know if Robert Ludlum parody erotica is a thing, but it should be.
posted by Dr Dracator at 7:27 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Dildo criteria are something everyone should have front of mind before you breach the threshold, else you might get shook up in an unpleasant fashion and left with something hard to clean up.
posted by PMdixon at 7:53 AM on December 24, 2017
posted by PMdixon at 7:53 AM on December 24, 2017
The pioneer of such dildos was an unlikely sex-toy hero: ventriloquist Ted Marche.
"You're going back in the box."
"I don't want to go gack in the gox!"
... and so on.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:03 AM on December 24, 2017 [7 favorites]
"You're going back in the box."
"I don't want to go gack in the gox!"
... and so on.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:03 AM on December 24, 2017 [7 favorites]
they were pretty much always hiring in one department or another.
Had a lot of slots to fill, did they?
posted by Paul Slade at 9:09 AM on December 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
Had a lot of slots to fill, did they?
posted by Paul Slade at 9:09 AM on December 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
"The Dildo Criterion" sounds like some kind of Doctor Who or Star Wars backstory reference. "According to the Dildo Criterion of 2049, you are under arrest!"
posted by The otter lady at 9:28 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by The otter lady at 9:28 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
It was a seminal influence on the constitution of the planet Fuxavaginobuzzaclitorius, if memory serves.
posted by flabdablet at 9:47 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 9:47 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
This is in Australia though. I gather they basically test everything they sell, and then dropship it, so most of their work is in the website, and the testing.
Well, that explains why I never got that digeridoo I ordered.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:19 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Well, that explains why I never got that digeridoo I ordered.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 10:19 AM on December 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Anything can be a pun if you're brave enough.
posted by notquitemaryann at 11:40 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by notquitemaryann at 11:40 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Dildo criteria are what separate your dildos from your dildon'ts.
ಠ_ಠ
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:42 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
ಠ_ಠ
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:42 AM on December 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Fun article; sounds like a good book. I hope there's a chapter about the early years of Good Vibrations, and their notorious try out room.
posted by latkes at 2:00 PM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by latkes at 2:00 PM on December 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Lesser Spotted Potoroo - was your (former)otaku brother's spokespersonship product a sex toy aimed for the male anatomy market?
posted by porpoise at 6:22 PM on December 24, 2017
posted by porpoise at 6:22 PM on December 24, 2017
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