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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.
\n \n \nWhen 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.
\n \n \nNearly 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.
\n \n \nWho 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.
\n \n \nLingerie 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.
\n \n \nJust 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.
\n \n \nThe 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.
\n \n \nParis 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.
\n \n \nFrom 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.
\n \n \nLoaded 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.
\n \n \nAs 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.
\n \n \nWhere 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.
\n \n \nIt’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.
\n \n \nThe 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.
\n \n \nThe 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.
\n \n \nAs 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.
\n \n \nMost 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.
\n \n \nFrom 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.
\n \n \nMentor. 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.
\n \n \nWhen you love what you do for a living, they say, you'll never work a day in your life. Stephanie Koelsch proves it's exactly the opposite: when you genuinely love your job, you'll put your nose to the grindstone on the daily to keep your customers smiling.
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