Feature Articles
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WIA Profile: Ruth Arceo
In the beginning, all Ruth Arceo knew was that she dreamed of being a buyer — but when the opportunity presented itself for a career in the adult world, she found she’d struck it rich. Arceo is the lucky lady who gets to pick and choose how to line the shelves at The Pleasure Chest in West Hollywood, California.
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WIA Profile: Sarah Franson
When you do what you love, they say, you’ll never work a day in your life — and when your job involves educating the masses about sex toys, it’s hard not to love what you do.
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WIA Profile: April Hoopes
When you do what you love, they say, you’ll never work a day in your life — and when your job involves educating the masses about sex toys, it’s hard not to love what you do. As director of sales for pleasure brand Edonista, April Hoopes would surely agree.
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WIA Profile: Brittany Vela
Nearly 15 years ago, at age 19, Brittany Vela applied for her first adult boutique job, as a sales associate for Sara’s Secret in Texas. Vela instantly fell in love with her work, the environment, and the people around her.
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WIA Profile: Kim Patterson
Who ever dreamed that a chilly northern town, off the beaten path and far from North America’s most trendy cities, would turn out to be the ideal birthplace for an adult business? Kim Patterson did, 20 years ago, back when she was an aspiring retail owner with the simple ambition of running her own store.
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WIA Profile: Sarah Konkel
Lingerie marketing and sales requires a special touch. In the case of Florida-based lingerie brand Oh La La Cheri, that also means a woman’s touch — namely, that of Key Account Manager Sarah Konkel.
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WIA Profile: Tracy Leone
Just under a decade ago, the adult industry — especially the DVD sector — was still blatantly a man’s world, but that didn’t stop Tracy Leone from daring to break ground with her own style of business savvy and candy-sweet approach to customer service.
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WIA Profile: Stacey Monroe
The pleasure industry’s focus on sex toys — especially given their increasing mainstream popularity — often overshadows the lingerie sector. Here, all consumers need to bring sensual fantasies to life is a human body and a little imagination.
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WIA Profile: Celine Menting
Paris may be known as the City of Love, but Celine Menting felt that the south of France left much to be desired in the romance department. In response to her region’s lack of inclusive adult brick-and-mortars, Menting founded and currently manages retail pleasure shop La Clef des Charmes.
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WIA Profile: Stephanie Keating
From We-Vibe to WOW Tech to Lovehoney Group, there have been plenty of big changes behind the scenes at the home of brands like Womanizer, Fifty Shades of Grey and pjur, but at least one thing has remained the same: Sales and Marketing Director Stephanie Keating.
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WIA Profile: Kim Marks
Loaded buzzwords like “eco-friendly” and “inclusive” aren't just marketing fodder to Kim Marks. As founder and CEO of the small Oregon-based retail chain As You Like It, Marks lives her ethos in every business step she takes.
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WIA Profile: Zoë Ligon
As a boutique owner, sex educator, sexuality influencer, author and sex toy co-designer, Zoë Ligon is as trendy and widespread as the air pulse clitoral stimulators she sells online.
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WIA Profile: Kathi Pepper
Where there’s a will to educate the curious and those lacking in sexual knowledge, there’s a woman ready to lead the way. In Mississippi, where sex education leaves much to be desired, Kathi Pepper is that leading lady.
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WIA Profile: Jackie Richerson
It’s hard to imagine Jackie Richerson as a green retail part-timer from small-town Kentucky. After all, today’s Richerson is an old pro at the sex toy game, for whom phone calls to Europe to lend her manufacturing expertise are the norm.
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WIA Profile: Jane Morgan
The new world of pleasure products is a far cry from the days when adult boutiques were seedy “sex shops” where customers hid their faces while slinking out the door carrying vibrators in black plastic bags.
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WIA Profile: Holly Berejikian
The Sexy Suz Couples Boutique in Athens, Georgia owes much of its success to a secret that only locals and industry pros are lucky enough to know about: store manager Holly Berejikian.
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WIA Profile: Louise Wong
As senior business development manager at LELO, Louise Wong juggles multiple brands, nurtures her team, and taps new markets daily. She sees her main goal, however, as paving the way for the next generation of Asian youth to thrive in their sexuality.
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WIA Profile: Jessica Quinn
Most sex toy brands launch with guns blazing, but that's not Jessica Quinn's style — though she does stock a dual-stim vibrator called the Rabbit 45 that's shaped like an old Western handgun.
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WIA Profile: Stephanie Trachtenberg
From children's playthings to adult toys, Satisfyer's Stephanie Trachtenberg knows how to spin a brand and win the hearts of clients and consumers alike.
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WIA Profile: Christina Williams
Mentor. Mother. Maven of the sale. That’s Christina Williams and her career in a nutshell, and after eight years — both in the pleasure space and with NS Novelties — she’s fulfilled her original adult life goal of becoming an independent woman with the world at her feet.
