I make Sex Toys
Hi My name is Wayne I make sex toys. for a living. Yes.
How is that not a great way to start a conversation? Great for parties!!
Not only do I make sex toys, I make sex toys that give you electric shocks!!. I'm the creator of E-Stim Systems, an award winning UK company well known for being different when it comes to the world of adult play.
Join me as I explore the hidden world of making sex toys, the ups and downs of working in an very interesting industry, and the ins and outs of using our products.
I make Sex Toys
E-Stim Shocks Hollywood
Ever wondered what it takes to thrive in the adult retail industry?
Tune in with Wayne, who takes us on a journey from the early days at small fetish fairs to the bustling show floors of international events in cities like Barcelona, Germany, and now Hollywood, California. We share the logistical nightmares and hefty expenses of these events, shedding light on why they're crucial for networking, product showcasing, and industry relationships—even if they don’t lead to immediate sales. Face-to-face interactions, and why they are priceless for building lasting connections and staying on the industry's radar.
We also get a peek into the meticulous preparation required for these global events. From packing essentials to dealing with travel and accommodation for staff, We explains how thorough planning ensures success. Discover the ins and outs of a typical event day, and the hustle of setting up and breaking down stands.
Post-event, We highlight the importance of customer follow-ups and smoothly transitioning back to regular business operations, showing us that the commitment to success never truly stops. This episode offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at exhibiting at shows across the world.
Drop us a message, we cannot reply directly but it would be great to here from you
"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
Hello everyone. It's Wayne here from I Make Sex Toys, and today I am in sunny California. In fact, I'm in Hollywood. Why am I in Hollywood? Well, we're here to do something called the Amy Founders Show, which is a big US show for adult retailers, and it's a new experience for us because we've never done this one. We've never done a show in the us. We've done shows in europe. A couple of months ago we were in barcelona and a couple of months time we are in germany. America is a first for us.
Speaker 1:This, to a certain extent, is what some people consider to be the glamour side of the business. What I came to do really is to explain why it's not quite as glamorous as it sounds. Yeah, it's a very nice hotel Paul's just over there. There's palm trees behind me. There's aircraft flying above, because we're very close to Burbank Airport. It's been a bit of a slog to get here. In fact, it's been a slog of about 20 years to a certain extent.
Speaker 1:We've been doing events ever since we started. In fact, that's how we started. We would do things called fetish fairs, which were little events normally held at the weekends in the back of a pub or a small hall or something like that, and people would come and visit and see what we do. And it wasn't just us. It would be people making latex clothing, people making whips, wooden instruments, anything you can think about it Anything to do with the industry. It was almost the predecessor to Etsy. These days, everyone sells everything through Etsy, although good old Etsy have now decided that adult is a bad thing, so anyone on Etsy is now leaving Etsy very quickly if they do anything that's adult related. Luckily, we've never done it at Etsy. But that's how we started. We started doing these small events and we would start to do the larger events. The larger events for us were bigger versions of the fetish fairs, things like Kinkfest. As we grew, the events grew, so we then did something called Erotica. Now, erotica was a major event for us. It ran over several years, olympia in London. It was a massive expense for us at the time. In fact, if it ran again, it would still be a massive expense for us. It's one fact. If it ran again, it would still be a massive expense for us. It's one of those things that you just have to factor in, and I am going to talk about expense because these events are not cheap. I am about 5 600 miles away from our base in the uk. We've had to ship three staff out here. We've had to ship all of our kit for the stand and pay for the stand, pay for for the hotel, pay for flights. It's not been cheap. We've also recently done events in Barcelona and we've got another event planned for Germany. So we do two to three events around the world each year.
Speaker 1:Why do we do events? The simple answer is because it means we get to go out and talk to people and as a business, for me that is the most important aspect of what we do the people, the people, the people that buy our products, the people that sell our products. We love going to talk to you. We love going out there and just seeing what's happening in the world. Most of the events we do, particularly this style of event. We don't walk away with big orders, we don't walk away with lots of sales, because that's not the way the industry works. And equally, we couldn't carry all the stock that we would need to stock a store at a stand on an event without having to triple or quadruple how much we spend shipping all out. And then you get into interesting issues with customs, import duty and all that sort of thing which, if you're bringing one item in, not a problem, if you're bringing 150 SKUs, that's a problem. So we don't do it. So we just attend these events purely and simply to talk to people, to show what we do, do some demonstrations, to chat. That's why we do it. It's almost a case of to use the official term, it's networking and it's also a showcase for what we do and how we do it. It's very effective for us. It works for us.
Speaker 1:What's the downside? The first downside is cost. It is expensive. It's not for two events, it's just the fact that we're doing an event 5,000 miles away and you need to use one of these things. You can hear the aeroplane going over. Now the fact is events are expensive. To give you a rough idea, just for the stand alone, which I think was a 10 foot by 8 foot stand, was $5,000.
Speaker 1:Then you have to add on hotel, then you have to add on flights across the world, from the UK to the US, and I don't feel comfortable sending staff the cheapest possible route because, at the end of the day, my are valuable to me. My staff have to be able to function when they get to the other side. So we tend to do business class or, in my case, the virgin equivalent, which is premier something or other, but it's not first class. And no, I don't fly first class and leave the poor old staff in back. That would not be fair. I fly the same route. I fly the same style.
Speaker 1:So you've paid for your stand. Now you've got to fit the stand out. So you've got to pay for furniture. You've got to pay for electric, you've got to pay for panelling so you can display your items or your posters, you've got to pay for printing for posters, you name it. Everything you see on a stand you effectively have to pay for, and it's on top of the cost of the stand. Sometimes you get a couple of chairs and a table and in fact this case we did, but we still had to put a stand together. That gave us the extra bits. The other thing that people forget is we have to plan for these six to 12 months in advance. We are already planning for next year For this particular event, because it was quite special and it was quite a last minute. It was six months.
Speaker 1:Amy is one of those shows that were quite restrictive in terms of they, because they're a founder show. They were based around the concept of having US companies and for many years we looked at doing Amy and for many years we couldn't do Amy because we weren't a US company, we were a UK company. But we shipped to the US. This year was the first year where, when we spoke to them, they basically invited us, said yeah, we would love you to come. And we were a bit shocked. We actually had to ask them twice and they said, no, definitely, we'd definitely love to have you. So we came, but that was back in January. So we had to do the stand plan, sort the insurance out, book hotels, book flights, work out how to get all of our stock and display stuff over here, and it's been interesting. We've recently done a little podcast stroke video of how to travel with eastin, but that was based around traveling with eastin for personal use in your luggage. Traveling with eastin when you've got an entire display system and a whole pile of other bits and pieces is even more interesting, but it's not as bad as people think.
Speaker 1:This time we we put everything through UPS. Two of the items got here relatively quickly. The third item had gone to Kansas City twice, which was not great. When you start looking at trackers and going why is my package still in Kansas City two days before the event, you start to worry. The good news about UPS is they did actually get here just on time. We had the setup on the Sunday and the package arrived on the saturday. One tip for you if you are shipping large, expensive items around the world, stick some apple air tags in there. It gives you at least some peace of mind. You know where your packages are roughly and you can potentially give the tracking details to the company that shipping it and go look. If you don't know where the package is, we do, it's here, go look for it.
Speaker 1:So we spent all the time planning, managed to get to Heathrow, got through Gratian etc. Jumped a plane eight and a half hour flight. So we arrived on the Saturday. Set up was Sunday and then the show was Monday, tuesday, wednesday and I'm recording this on Thursday morning and we're due to fly back to the UK today. Luckily I'm not in the office tomorrow so I'm not going to have to deal with the jet lag, because jet lag is a bit of an issue, which is one of the reasons we fly in earlier because we have to be able to function when we get here. It's really difficult if you're running on a time zone that's five hours behind, and I think we're running on something like seven hours behind. It's entertaining, but we have to add in those extra days.
Speaker 1:Once you arrive, the next thing is you're going to set stand up, so hopefully everything has arrived on your stand and all things that you've ordered have actually arrived the power's on the table's there, the shelving's there, etc. So it's now a case of cleaning everything down, put everything up, make it all pretty, and that takes a few hours to get right and half the time you're normally running around. So the organizer's saying I still don't have power on my stand, we've forgotten something. Well, that's the wrong side. We did do one event once where we turned up and the stand was twice the size that we'd actually booked and they were like oh, we gave it to you for free because we had to change the stand plan, which was great, but you didn't give us any notice. And now we've got big white panels which we don't have any printed material, because we didn't expect to have these big white panels, but we coped.
Speaker 1:That's the other thing when you do an event, you have to realize that it's not going to get perfect. Carry spares, have plan Bs, bring extra bits and pieces. Gaffer tape is always a useful thing, cable ties, something to cut scissors, that sort of thing. If you've got a trolley because you want to move things around, bring a trolley. You'll guarantee that other people on other stands will be coming to you and going. Can I borrow a pair of scissors? Can I borrow a trolley? Because they've forgotten what we always forget. We actually have a crate that is just for event stuff which has all of our bits and pieces in, and it works quite well.
Speaker 1:We don't do events trying to save money. You just can't do it. You have to realize the fact that, yep, there is a budget. We're not going to waste money. But in order to actually do it well, you have to spend some money, and that includes things like decent travel, decent hotels, feeding staff. We don't turn around to the staff and say, oh, everyone has to go to mcdonald's. No, we can eat in the restaurant. People have choices. That's the way we operate. It makes things much more fun and this trip has been really good and I will commend my staff for doing really well on the strip because it's worked really well. We've enjoyed this.
Speaker 1:So what is a typical day at an event? Well, it's not much difference to normal. You get up, you have some breakfast, you get to the event, you sit around talking to people all day and then at the end of the day, you leave the event, this particular event. There was some after-show things that we were asked to attend. There was an award ceremony which we were up for an award. Thank you very much, store Erotica. We didn't win. Were up for an award. Thank you very much, store erotica. We didn't win. These things happen to be nominated as a uk company for a store award in the us which is based around us retailers. That is fantastic. That is such an honor and we're so proud of just being nominated. It's brilliant.
Speaker 1:Lunch during the shows tends to be a bit hit and miss. Because we're on the stand chatting to people. We do manage to not need to jump in and get some miss. Because we're on the stand chatting to people. We do manage to not need to jump in and get some food, and we also try and make our stands quite welcoming, so we tend not to put tables out, which become barriers. Hate that classic where you have a table in front and you sit behind the table and people come talk to you. It just puts that physical barrier between you. We tend to have tables to the side and we'll stand up and talk to people, because it's much more fun and it allows us to then pick items up and talk about particular items. These days, most people know about what eSteam is, which is great.
Speaker 1:When we first started, you spent half the conversation trying to explain what we do. Now most people understand what we do, but there's still the little quirks and extra bits that you can talk about and explain why we are different to everyone else. Because we are different to everyone else. We don't make stuff in china. We make stuff in the uk, on our own workshops, which gives us more control. It gives us a better understanding of the product. Once you talk to people about that, they realize that they're actually dealing with a company that is different. That's the thing for us. That's our unique selling point.
Speaker 1:If you want to stock Easton, I try and avoid having my podcast as just an advertisement for what we do. We want to be different. We want to be seen to be different, because that is the way you stand out in any business environment Be different. If you're the same as everyone else, if everything's been made in China and it's all made of rubber or latex or whatever, you're just another company and the only thing people are going to see is different is the price. That doesn't work for us. So we like to be different and after 20 years, I think I can say it's working for us.
Speaker 1:Now, once you're at the show, most of the time is doing the show or eating and sleeping, so we don't have that much time to actually have time off. We did, this time, do a couple of touristy things. We did manage to go up into the Hollywood Hills and see the Hollywood sign and, if I can get my editing right, here is the Hollywood sign. We've been here. We've been to Hollywood. I think we went to Target as well. We did some shopping. Once the events ended.
Speaker 1:We then have to do a breakdown, so everything that came over from the UK now has to go back into the crates. For some reason, every single time we do this, they don't go back in the crates the same way. We always end up with more things to go in the crate than came in the crate and I've never worked that one out. We managed to squeeze everything in the crate and got them down to the shippers and they're off back to the UK. And now it's just a case of relaxing, going to drop, drop the hire car off, get back to the airport and then jump on the plane and fly back to the UK.
Speaker 1:Once we eventually get back to the UK, and eventually our crates get back to us, things don't stop there. Then it's a case of everything has to be unpacked, everything has to be checked, everything has to be cleaned up, and then we move into the business side of things, where we start to talk to customers. So we'll start to do the follow-ups. We'll start to contact the people that we've spoken to on the stands, take things to the next level. So we then start to do the business side of things. That can be weeks, it can be months. It's the way it works. So that's about it. This is how we do events overseas in the glamorous world or international business. Welcome to Hollywood. Thanks for listening. If you like what I'm doing, please consider leaving a review. But whatever you do, please be safe and have fun. And thanks for listening. Bye.
