Breaking Taboos: Lessons Learned in Running an Adult Industry Business

Join me, Wayne, the founder of E-Stim Systems and the Host of 'I Make SexToys', as I delve into the often misunderstood world of the adult industry. I try to address some of  the pervasive taboos surrounding businesses like mine and sheds light on the challenges faced in establishing legitimacy in the marketplace.

From navigating payment processing hurdles to dealing with societal misconceptions, I let give you a firsthand account of the trials and triumphs encountered while starting and running a business in the adult industry. Discover the intricacies of securing merchant accounts, overcoming advertising restrictions, and even hiring staff amidst societal stigma.

Through anecdotes and insights, Wayne offers a glimpse into the realities of operating within this unique sector, debunking myths and sharing valuable lessons learned along the way. Whether you're a curious observer or an aspiring entrepreneur, this podcast provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of an often overlooked industry. Join me as I uncover some of the truths behind the taboos and explore the complexities of running an adult business in the modern world. Don't miss out on this eye-opening discussion.

Subscribe now for more exclusive content and industry insights!

"I make sex toys" is a the personal podcast of Wayne Allen, the Director of E-Stim Systems. The content of these podcasts are not designed to be Explicit or Erotic but we may discuss adult topics and therefore these podcasts are not suitable for children or those of a nervous disposition. You have been warned.

If you are interested in E-Stim Systems the company, or any of our products, have a look at https://www.e-stim.me/buy

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Payment Systems in Adult Industry
• 10:22 Customs, Donations, and Advertising Challenges
• 22:18 Podcast Wrap-Up and Thanks

Transcript

Wayne: 0:00

Hello, it's Wayne here from I'm XX Toys, and today I'm gonna tell you about dealing with some of the issues regarding the taboos around running a business within the adult industry, taboos and the adult industry. One of the problems we have with any business running in the adult industry is people's perceptions of it. People fundamentally think we're all having sex, we're all prostitutes, we're all selling our bodies, we're all having sex, we're all prostitutes, we're all selling our bodies, we're all doing drugs, we've all got dodgy money and that's a big issue when you're actually trying to create a legitimate business. Now, if individuals think this is not a massive issue, it's just a fact that we need to educate them as to the fact that we're actually running a decent business. The problem is when you have to deal with other organisations and they think it or their policies are laid out in such a way that the company itself thinks it.

Wayne: 0:46

Now, the first thing you need generally when you start up a business is a bank account. Now, a bank account is some way to store your money, but it also provides you with a facility to receive money from customers. One of the things we have is most of our business is conducted online. In fact, all of our business is conducted online. We do have stores. They conduct business online and face-to-face but payment systems that's down to them, but we, as a business, we conduct business online. Therefore, we need to have some way for you, the customer, to actually receive the goods and send us some money Actually send us some money first and then receive the goods. That's the way it normally works, but there needs to be some facility. Now, these days, there are quite a few different ways of doing it, but there are still two main ones, one of which is credit cards and the other one is PayPal.

Wayne: 1:31

Now, when we first started, paypal was still linked to eBay, and most of the policies that PayPal created were based around the policies that eBay were using, and eBay didn't really like adult goods. If you tried to sell something on eBay that was adult, then they would frown upon it and suddenly you'd discover that your listings were being pulled. We didn't really do anything on eBay because we didn't like not having control over what was shown. We didn't like them having control over our policies in terms of returns. We couldn't do lifetime guarantees, because they just assumed that everything just needed to be returned and fully refunded. It just didn't work for us, so we never really used eBay. Paypal weren't too bad.

Wayne: 2:07

When we actually got into the banks and started discussing with the bank that we would like to run a business and we'd like to use you to facilitate our business, that wasn't a massive issue. Then we got into an interesting area. Give you a little bit of background here and give you a little bit of education, because you might not know how these things work. When you go and pay for something using a credit card, if you're doing it face to face, you'll come up with a little machine. You put your card in the machine, you put your PIN number in, or these days you have tap and go. That machine then talks to a merchant provider and the merchant provider is the one who actually does the card processing. In a few days time, that merchant provider will then give us or give our bank the money.

Wayne: 2:47

The problem we had was trying to find a company that would allow us to use them as a merchant provider, so they're the ones who provide the system that goes from the machine to our bank. We managed to find one company, which was a company called world pay, and they were a startup at the time. I mean I say startup, that was pretty big, but they were a startup at the time. I mean I say startup, they were pretty big, but they were just getting into the industry. They were just getting into online payments and things like that. So we managed to find them.

Wayne: 3:11

The problem with WorldPay is they turned around and said we're going to give you 30 days, which means that when you pay WorldPay for the products that you've just bought from us, they will hold onto that money for 30 days in case you decide to do a charge back or in case it turns out to be fraudulent, so they can immediately give you your money back and we get nothing. But the problem is we have to wait 30 days and for a lot of businesses, particularly startup businesses, that's a big chunk of time to wait for money for something that has already been given to the customer and we have to wait for it. And I have heard since then that some of the companies there isn't just one merchant provider these days, there's quite a few, but some of these companies are actually going up to 60 days not 30 days, not 45 days, but 60 days before the store or the manufacturer can get any money, which I think is a bit over the top, guys. However, we managed to find Wellpay and Wellpay were quite happy with us and I think in the first year we probably had one charge back.

Wayne: 4:06

Now, generally, we didn't do too badly because both the banks and WorldPay decided that because we were selling tangible goods, ie goods that physically existed, this was less of an issue than a lot of the adult industry. If we were selling digital services or we were selling porn, that would be completely different and that's the sort of thing they really, really didn't like, because there's just nothing there. It doesn't really exist. Yes, it does exist. It's a file, but it was a lot easier for people to perform fraudulent transactions on those.

Wayne: 4:36

And then, when you get into things like prostitution or escorts or whatever you want to call it, that really really got into big issues with payment providers. That's why in 2024, there's still payment providers out there who, the minute they see anything adult, they go oh no, I'm not going to touch it. If any of you out there know about the website called fetlife, fetlife is probably the biggest fetish contact website in the world. We do actually advertise on there. Fetlife have major, major issues with payment providers and and they spent months, if not years, gaining a payment provider and then losing a payment provider. They were some very convoluted ways of getting money out of people for memberships, purely and simply because nobody would touch them with a barge pod, because it was adult.

Wayne: 5:16

Anyway, back to WorldPay. We were doing quite well for probably two, three years, no major issues, and then suddenly we get a letter saying we're closing any account that's to do with adult, which was a bit of a shock. And it wasn't just us. Initially you think, oh, what have I done? But no, it was the adult industry across the board. They were basically setting themselves up to be purchased and they decided that the adult industry was an area which they didn't want to have any contact with. Therefore, no, they were going to drop us all. This was a bit of an issue. However, we then went to our bank and said hello, mr Bank Manager, pretty pretty, please can we have a merchant account? And they would look at the bank and go yeah, we don't see any issues here. We've seen your track record, we've seen the fact that you've got money going into the bank. It looks quite healthy. Okay, here you can have a Streamline account, and Streamline is another merchant account. Great, no problem. Thank you very much, Set everything up on the new system.

Wayne: 6:09

In the meantime, worldpay were bought out, disappeared off into the wide blue yonder for a while and then WorldPay reappeared on the scene. Because world pay were buying streamline oh dear. And we did panic a little bit and go what's going to happen here? But the answer is, yeah, world pay were purchased by another company, which was much, much larger, and eventually purchased streamline as well, and all they were really interested in is how much money was coming in. And we are still with a derivative of world pay, straight, I think now they call themselves Elivon or something like that. We're still there. We're still running and managed to survive the changes to the payment systems. We still use PayPal.

Wayne: 6:48

Paypal is probably, for us, one of the nicest payment systems because they don't hold onto your money for silly amounts of time, providing you follow the rules when you purchase a product and when you send a product to a customer. And if you are considering using PayPal, please, please, please check their terms and conditions, especially when it comes to sending product out, because if you don't follow their terms and conditions and the customer makes a complaint like a product isn't as described or a product hasn't arrived, you will quite simply lose everything straight away, because if you haven't followed PayPal's rules, they will automatically find in the direction of the customer. However, if you have followed the rules and you've done everything correctly nine times out of 10, then PayPal generally find in your favor because you followed the rules. That's payment systems. What else did we have issues with? Strangely enough, one thing we didn't have issues with was premises.

Wayne: 7:40

In terms of when we moved from the garage that we were operating in when we first started to a business centre, I spoke to the business centre. Now this business centre is Wenter Business Centre in Watford. They still exist and they basically offer startup units. So it's a business unit on a rolling lease. You pay a monthly fee and you get space and you can run a business from there. That's what they're designed to do. In all honesty, if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't be here. So big shout out to Winter Business Centre in Watford Great bunch of people. We still actually do have some premises over there. We've got a studio which, strange enough, is not the studio I'm working from today, but we do have one over there.

Wayne: 8:15

When I went to Wenta and explained what I was doing. They were quite interested. In fact they found it quite funny. Their answer was well, is it legitimate, is it legal? Yep, that's how we got our first premises. When we moved to a large premises and moved into our lease workshops which is where we are now and I think we've been there just over 10 years just signed a new lease Again, they were just more interested in whether we could actually pay the rent. So some people out there are actually quite enlightened as to what the adult industry does.

Wayne: 8:39

We had a printer who was the complete opposite. When we first started, we wanted to have some brochures printed and some flyers and some leaflets and we spent ages with a artist getting some bits and pieces done, went to a local printer and he took two weeks to tell us that he wasn't going to have anything to do with this disgusting business. And we were like what Sorry? He says. Basically he put adult and thought he was selling prostitute cards or something and that was it. That's the last of the business you'll ever get from us and strangely enough, they no longer exist. The printer we do use yep, they're still around.

Wayne: 9:16

Other things that people think about running an adult business Please, please, please send everything in plagiarized packaging. Do people really think we are going to send out product with a big sign on it saying look, everyone I make sex toys is sending you something. Of course we're going to try and send out product in discreet and plain packaging. We are not stupid. We know that people don't want their neighbours to know what's going on. However, there is a case where people sometimes get a little bit paranoid. Please don't assume that the postman is going to know what's in your package and we have the same sometimes if a package ever goes to a location where they have to be picked up from the post office. Now, this normally occurs when you ask for home delivery and you're in a location where they can't deliver to home. We generally ask for a signature because we don't want the packages disappearing and therefore you have to go to a local post office to pick it up. And again, people have this idea that, oh, I can't go to the post office and pick it up because the person behind the window they'll know what's in the package. They don't. It's a box and they probably see 150 brown boxes every single day.

Wayne: 10:22

Yes, if we send stuff overseas and send it through customs, we do have to put some description on it. That is the law, unfortunately. We can't avoid that. But we don't put sex toys. We put signal generator on because technically that's what power boxes are. They are an electronic signal generator. Therefore we put the standard customs code for electronic signal generator and most of the time there's no issue. The times there are in issues when they decide that, despite brexit and all the other agreements they're floating out there, they want to charge some form of duty on it and then, yeah, it does get a little bit convoluted, but then they don't care what's inside the box, as long as it's not drugs or guns or something. As far as they're concerned, it's an electronic device. End of story.

Wayne: 11:03

Other things that happen within our industry well, some of the funny ones are when companies phone up and ask for donations. Now, this is something that probably happens to most companies. You get somebody phoning up and saying that we're xyz from xZ charity and we'd like a donation, and what they're doing is they're expecting to get some form of donation, either financial or products or something like that, and they probably have a big list of companies in their local area. They cold call the companies and hope they're going to get something out of it. The problem occurs when they call us. Let's face it, we're an adult company. We make, make sex toys and most of the time our products are possibly not going to be how do I say this suitable for some of the charities or the causes that they're asking for. The problem is they still try it on and sometimes they lie. Generally I don't answer the phone because I'm running around like the proverbial, designing things and trying to get things to work and fixing things like that. So they'll phone the office and they're like oh yes, I spoke to your managing director and he said he's going to donate to this cause. And they're like really now, because, one, they know if I was going to donate to a particular cause I would have told them already. And two, we just don't donate to the causes. That just phone us up out of the blue.

Wayne: 12:15

Then Then you hear some very interesting quote selling techniques, unquote. One of the funniest ones is the hi, yes, I'm Joe Bloggs from the local police and we're doing this and the first thing is you listen and go oh, my god, it's the police. Then they sort of go oh, we're not actually the police, but we're working with the police to raise funds for a local child's football charity. And how can I help? Well, I'd spoken to your managing director and he said that he's going to donate some of your products to our charity. Really, yes, okay. So could you explain to me how sex toys are going to work with a children's football charity? Hello, hello, hello, ooh, they've put the phone down. We had that several times and that's where actually telling people that we make sex toys bluntly is a really good way of suddenly getting to put the phone down.

Wayne: 13:06

What normally happens is when we have conversations about what we do, because people ask you, what do you do? And you sometimes have to gauge how to say it to people politely without causing offence, because you never, never know, people might just get offended because they don't like anything to do with the word sex. So what we tend to do is we do yeah, we do medical electronics, because that's really really boring and, depending on how they respond to that, you might turn around and go well, that's the official line, but what we actually do is make sex toys, and if they kill themselves laughing, then generally you know that you've got a good response and that's, I would say, 80% of the time, that's what you get. It's always fun when you walk around trade shows because we go to quite a lot of trade shows, because we're a manufacturer Number of people who we've been to trade shows who remember us because we're the weird company that makes sex toys.

Wayne: 13:53

Now, advertising in general is a big issue because advertising is one of those things you need to get the stuff out there. It costs lots of money. It generally only makes money for the advertising companies, doesn't make money for us, especially these days when you try and use the traditional media, but even the non-traditional media. So things like facebook facebook drive me up the wall, because facebook will probably daily ping me and say you could put this post as an advert and I know no, I can't. You could put this post as an advert. You could boost this post Only £25 or £250. It soon goes up quite quickly and every so often I'll go okay, go on. Then Hit the boost button.

Wayne: 14:31

Your advert links to a site that is pornographic. You're going to get banned if you keep doing this. Well, you did keep offering it to me. Therefore, can you stop offering it to me? If you're not going to let me do it, I'm quite happy to pay money to you, but if you're not going to let me advertise my products on your website, I'm not going to pay any money to you. I'll have to use other methods like social media and podcasting.

Wayne: 14:53

Luckily, these days, a lot of the advertising is effectively word of mouth, and word of mouth and word of mouth is actually the one thing that's worked for us, because we like to talk to people, we like to have conversations and people like to talk to other people, and it's one of the things we really like to do. It's one of the reasons why we started doing these podcasts, because I get to sit here with a microphone and just talk. It's what I do. However, people also think that word of mouth is something that they can use against us, and we have had in the past where people get how do I say this a little bit upset with some decision that we've made, or they feel slighted in some way, and they do the. I'm going to go onto social media and I'm going to tell all my friends how bad you are.

Wayne: 15:31

And, yeah, that generally doesn't work because, firstly, we see that as a threat and if you're threatening any of my staff in any way, shape or form, or my business, or you start to be rude and obnoxious. That's when, as far as we're concerned, a line is drawn. We will not countenance anyone being obnoxious or rude to any of my staff. Full stop, end of story. If you want us to do anything, particularly if something's gone slightly wrong, especially if something's gone slightly wrong, especially if something's gone slightly wrong and actually it's probably your side and not ours, but we're still trying to help, be nice or at least be civil, and certainly don't start trying to threaten us with oh, I'm going to go onto social media and tell everyone, because it really doesn't work. What we normally do in that situation is go fine, no problem, thank you very much. We're no longer going to deal with you.

Wayne: 16:17

And if they then decide to start posting on social media, we do exactly the same, except we'll generally give our side of the story. And because we try to be reasonable, because we try to do the right thing, yeah, most of the time it works. Sometimes we do actually make mistakes, and I'll put my hands up. Yep, we make mistakes, and if we make mistakes, we will do our best to rectify them. However, if you start posting on social media, what tends to happen is, firstly, people don't give the whole story. They'll only give their side of the story, which is fair enough because that's what they wish to post, but they tend to forget little key elements. That then gives us the opportunity to turn around and say excuse me, really sorry, but we feel your recollection of this conversation might not be the same as ours and we're quite happy to have that conversation in public, in front of everyone else, because we're not one of these companies One thing, changing the subject slightly because we're not one of these companies who wants to hide everything, we're quite happy to have a discussion with somebody about our failings or things that might have gone wrong in public.

Wayne: 17:24

Too many times I see companies on social media, particularly things like Twitter, where somebody makes a complaint and the first thing the company says is oh, contact us on DM, contact us so we can get it out of the public eye. My answer to that is I'm quite happy to have the discussion with people in public. Obviously, if you have private information, that's the time to DM the company and we'll say please, dm us all the details so I can investigate, because it might be they're having an issue with something that I know absolutely nothing about. But I'm quite happy to have a conversation with people in public about what went wrong and what we can do, and because we generally try and do the right thing. Other people see that conversation and what happens when somebody's ranting and raving on social media about how bad we are and how all this is rubbish and all this is shit, etc. Etc. Is they make themselves look silly Because people see what they're posting.

Wayne: 18:15

People see what we're posting and the people who generally don't have any axe to grind are looking at it and going yeah, you're a bit of an idiot, aren't you really? Now, yeah, they could be referring to us as being a bit of an idiot, but we've been doing it a while. We try to do our best, but people rant and rave on social media and it's like it's not really the way that actually occurred. Generally, if people are going to threaten us, it's already gone beyond the point of no return anyway. Sometimes and that has occurred where people have done that I still try and reply to them and go look, please don't threaten us. But this is what I would like to do, because here's a solution. I don't want unhappy customers. I want people to be happy or, at the very least, I want people to be accepting of the situation and nine times out of 10, they'll settle down, we'll come up with some idea that helps them and makes them happy, because at the end of the day, I'd like happy customers, but if you're going to threaten us, just don't, because it just doesn't work.

Wayne: 19:11

Now the good news is I'm nearly at the end of this podcast. I actually have a big, long list of stuff that I was going to talk about. I've got two things to add, one of which was a question that I was asked the other day and I was like, oh, I've never really explained that one. I am Eastim Sai on the forum, and somebody said to me why are you, eastim Sai, on the forum? Why are you weighing everywhere else?

Wayne: 19:30

The reason Eastim Sai came about is when I first started the business, I worked part-time in a primary school. I was also working in university and part of the university's remit was doing outreach to primary schools for IT. So I worked in a primary school for IT and I knew that the staff would be out and about and they'd look on the internet and the minute they see my name attached to my new business, that might cause a few issues. It certainly might cause a few issues with parents, because parents think all teachers are squeaky clean and I didn't want to offend anyone. So that's where East Impsi came from. It was my pseudonym that I would use on social media until I actually started running the business full time. Then Wayne came more to the fore and now that days it's a case of yeah, if I'm talking to you generally, it's Wayne, if I'm on the forum, it tends to be East Impsi, because that's how the account is set up. But there's no issue with the split between Wayne and East Impsi. We are the same person. So I hope that clears things up. I never really realised it was an issue with some people, but anyway, yeah, east Impsi and Wayne are the same person.

Wayne: 20:33

Lastly, I'm mentioning this particular one because it came up very recently. We have a number of staff. We have at the moment 12 staff and that's a split between sales, manufacturing, electronics, packing etc. So we have 12 staff and we very recently put out an advert for a new member of staff. We had a gentleman in our packing department who sadly left us due to ill health, so we had to replace him. So we put an advert out for warehouse packing. And well, firstly, we had 572 applicants yes, 572 applicants which was a bit of a lot and it took a while to wade through them, and we whittled them down to about 20 for interviews.

Wayne: 21:14

The concerning thing was, on at least two occasions when we got to do interviews, they turned up and they hadn't a clue what we did, and I mean they hadn't looked up. And we provided the company name on the job system so they could quite easily look us up, but they hadn't looked us up, which, firstly, I think from an interview perspective is a really bad thing. But then somebody actually refused to turn up for an interview because of what we did, and it's like you're in the packing department, we thing. But then somebody actually refused to turn up for an interview because of what we did, and it's like you're in the packing department. We're not asking you to test the products, and even our testers don't test the products the way that some people think they test the products. You're in the packing department. You're not going to be testing the products. You're not going to be talking to customers about their sexual activities. You're packing orders anyway.

Wayne: 21:57

We did manage to find one person for packing and he's great guy. He's only just started, but we love him and I think he's enjoying what he does. Certainly it's been a bit eye-opening when you get the decimator out and they realize how big a decimator really is. But he is a great guy and it's great to find staff out there who are enthusiastic as to what we do and have come and joined our team and we love it. It's brilliant.

Wayne: 22:18

Anyway, that is the end of my podcast. I'm gonna have to edit it all down now so it's actually listenable. If you like what I'm doing, please don't forget to click whatever buttons they exist on your podcast listening system, and it'd be great if you'd like to leave a review. I think reviews can be left on spotify and apple podcasts, but if you can, please leave a and I hope this has been a bit informative and even entertaining, because that's why I'm doing this. It's an outlet for us to let you know some of the background behind some of the things we do, and it's great fun and I'm enjoying it. So my name's Wayne, also known as Eastimpsi. But thanks for listening, be safe and have fun. Bye. Be safe and have fun. Bye.