Over an otherwise ordinary lunch on a restaurant patio in downtown Toronto, Carolyn Eagle muses on a fateful conversation she had nine years ago.
The mother of two young sons, Eagle found herself in need of a more lucrative gig than her admin job and joked with a co-worker that she was considering two potential new careers: sex toy sales or hawking “geriatric equipment.” Fortunately for the pleasure industry, Eagle chose the former. So did the co-worker, and together the pair co-founded online retail outfit Betty’s Toy Box.
I learn something new every single day about this industry and about sexual health, and I’m always eager to pass along what I know.
Before that point, her path had taken her from earning a degree in political science and history — with a focus on women’s history and the politics of gender and sexuality — to working as a book publicist, assisting some of Canada’s most popular authors. However, the early mornings and late nights in publishing became impractical while raising very young boys, which led her to a virtual admin position for which she was highly overqualified. She needed a job that could support her as she transitioned away from her full-time stay-at-home-mom role, while retaining the flexibility of working from home. This led her to weigh her entrepreneurial options, and to her proverbial fork in the road.
Once she’d had her “Aha!” moment, Eagle quickly found herself strategizing about how to sell sex toys to middle-aged women.
“The minute I made the decision to get into the pleasure space, my brain just started to whirl,” says Eagle. “I was thinking of my own friends, women in their 40s — what they wanted, what they disliked about existing stores and what could make them more comfortable.”
Eagle had already decided to go the e-tail route but wanted to simulate an in-store experience, complete with articles, education and information that would strike a chord with the average consumer.
“It was important to me that the site have a look and feel that would be welcoming to everybody, with a fun twist that would make it less intimidating,” Eagle recalls. “It was also important to me to make people who had never dared purchase a pleasure product feel at home and comfortable enough to do so.”
Since then, Eagle has become the sole owner of the business, which she says has become a family project.
“My amazing sister, Tracy, is my assistant manager and we have employed both her daughter and my son over the years,” says Eagle. “Our corporate name, Viola Media Inc., is actually named after our grandma.”
Though still based in Canada, the company’s focus is on consumers south of the border.
“All of our staff are Canadian and we run everything from the Toronto area, but Betty’s is primarily a U.S. store,” explains Eagle. “We are a dot-com and 95% of our customer base is in the States.”
To ensure those customers have the experience she long ago resolved to provide, Eagle has developed a discriminating process for selecting what products to offer on her site.
“As an ecommerce business, I am really looking at the availability of images, mood shots and detailed product information,” she reveals. “I won’t list a dildo if you’re not going to tell me the insertable length, for example. This has been one of my biggest battles over the last nine years and I feel like some manufacturers really understand what ecommerce needs, while others just don’t — and those are brands I’ve pulled away from over the years.”
Eagle appreciates a good set of bells and whistles as much as the next person, but not if all they are is showy. Dong and vibrator makers need to prove themselves as functionality-focused, informed and inclusive to land a coveted spot among Betty’s retail offerings.
“I am always looking for something innovative yet practical,” says Eagle. “I am looking at materials and warranties for sure, but also to fill what I perceive as gaps in our current offerings, particularly in the areas of mobility, accessibility and sexual health.”
What are Betty’s customers currently lusting after? Eagle says that humping products, like the CalExotics Lust Pad and VibePad, are big sellers. So are insertable toys, such as penis extensions and hollow dildos from the CalExotics Performance Maxx line and Pipedream’s Fetish Fantasy collection.
What remains most central to Eagle’s vision, however, is how her staff members contribute to the warm welcome felt by Betty’s Toy Box customers. Though they never walk through a physical doorway, the virtual shop seems to create a similarly personal experience conducive to many a repeat order.
“I am incredibly proud of the rapport my staff and I have built with our customers,” says Eagle. “Our mandate is to treat everybody with kindness, honesty and respect, and it really resonates with people. Our number of returning customers is incredibly high and I think that speaks to the level of comfort people feel when they visit our store.”
Having started out as a drop-ship business, Eagle feels a sense of accomplishment not only for keeping her virtual doors open almost a decade, but also for transcending the expectations many had that Betty’s would merely be a quick-buck, flash-in-the-pan venture.
“In terms of B2B, I am incredibly proud of all the relationships I have built in the industry with our wholesalers and with the manufacturers,” Eagle beams. “We’ve had numerous award nominations, and that means the absolute world to me because it is my peers in the industry acknowledging that we’re doing something right.”
Eagle is not one to rest on her laurels, however. For the Betty’s Toy Box team, good business means constantly challenging the status quo.
“This year, we are focusing even more on servicing groups that we feel are often neglected or forgotten in discussions around pleasure: seniors, people living in larger bodies or with mobility issues, folks going through perimenopause and menopause,” says Eagle.
“I feel personally that I learn something new every single day about this industry and about sexual health, and I’m always eager to pass along what I know,” she concludes. “My team shares that enthusiasm and it’s what keeps us on our toes, constantly evolving so we can bring our absolute best to our customers.”
