Spicerack Market is an ecommerce platform with the heart of an artisan crafter and the soul of a kinkster.
On the website, independent sex toy makers, lingerie seamstresses and kink gear craftspeople can set up a personalized shop to sell their handmade wares, unhindered by censorship or bans on adult products. Spicerack also serves as a community where sellers and buyers can engage with one another, ask questions about products, and share or comment on social media-style videos that promote and showcase a maker’s goods.
Everything we do is to make the experience more intuitive, more inclusive and more human.
Since launching a year ago, Spicerack Market has welcomed over 350 artisan-run shops and hosted than 15,000 unique listings. On the Spicerack.market website, founder Avi Goldstein states that the platform’s mission is simple: to create a safe and inclusive space for shoppers and makers alike, where sexual wellness, self-expression and craftsmanship intersect.
Goldstein’s background is surprisingly unconventional for someone now so deeply involved in the adult products industry. However, his experiences have proven advantageous in becoming a sex toy creator and founder of an adult e-tail platform.
“I actually trained as a licensed speech pathologist and spent over a decade as a volunteer paramedic in New York City,” explains Goldstein. “During that time, I came up with a few product ideas to help rescue workers, which led me to leave speech pathology and start a company called StatGear.”
The company designed and manufactured rescue tools, selling them through Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Home Depot and elsewhere.
“That experience really laid the foundation for understanding which ecommerce features would be important to incorporate in a successful marketplace,” Goldstein adds.
StatGear brought Goldstein into collaboration with several talented product designers, whose skills he leveraged in creating his first silicone sex toy brand: Twisted Fantasies.
“Our goal was to create detailed, fun, out-of-the-box designs,” says Goldstein. “Like our Peach Pie A la Mode dildo, which literally has a peach at the tip, pie latticework on the shaft and ice cream scoops at the base. We wanted to bring a playful and artistic twist to pleasure products. People were responding well, especially on Etsy — until things changed.”
Etsy began removing Twisted Fantasies listings without clear reasons, and Goldstein noticed conversations on social media and Reddit about a growing crackdown on adult sellers in general.
“It became apparent that a more welcoming, purpose-built platform was necessary, where handmade adult creators could showcase their work without constantly fearing deactivation,” Goldstein recalls.
In response, he put together a development team and started building what would become Spicerack Market. The platform opened for business in March 2024 — just in time, it turned out. In June 2024, Etsy announced a complete ban on adult products.
This was a significant setback for the many small business owners whose indie adult brands the platform had previously hosted. It opened up a gap — which Spicerack Market quickly stepped in to fill, absorbing an influx of new retailers to help test the site and build infrastructure.
Word spread quickly, and Goldstein was approached by leading brands eager for a spot at the Spicerack table. As a result, the platform now also features major manufacturers like LELO, Lovense and We-Vibe.
“Now customers get both the artisan experience and the high-tech toys they love, all in one place,” Goldstein enthuses.
Shoppers browsing Spicerack can discover international brands such as Mercy Industries, an Australian leatherwork shop specializing in gear for doms and subs; Bound Kitten, a New York-based brand offering cheeky clothing, jewelry, and underwear featuring kinky quips like “I look better tied up” and “Bratty Slut”; and Deadly Desires, a vibrant British pen-and-ink artist who captures modern bondage and fetish scenes.
Customers can also shop by product category, where they will find a curated mix of small business offerings and trusted name brands.
Meanwhile, community forums enable customers and sellers to engage and ask questions about product sizing or features in what is essentially a virtual dressing room and shop floor, called Try and Tell.
Goldstein is particularly excited about his own contribution to Spicerack.
“We recently launched a new, more innovative offering under the Spicerack umbrella called Spicy Cantaloupe,” he reveals. “This is where things get really exciting.
“Spicy Cantaloupe is all about personalization and empowerment,” says Goldstein. “We use photogrammetry, which is essentially 3D scanning through a phone app we created, so customers can scan their own private parts, which we then mold into a fully functional silicone sex toy. It’s ultra-personal and makes for the ultimate custom gift or keepsake.”
Goldstein employs age verification, and strict privacy protocols to keep customer data confidential. Spicy Cantaloupe is currently the only shop on Spicerack Market utilizing this 3D scanning and personalization technology, but he hopes to extend it to other small-batch makers in the near future.
Currently, Spicerack accepts sellers from around the globe, but only shoppers from the United States. Goldstein is focusing on getting Canada operational next, and aims to expand to the EU and U.K. in late 2025, once he navigates the inevitable red tape.
Spicerack has already undergone a rebrand that features an updated logo, a more viewer-friendly visual identity and an improved marketplace experience, which Goldstein says was designed around real user behavior and survey data.
“Everything we do is to make the experience more intuitive, more inclusive and more human,” he affirms. “We’re doubling down on what sets us apart: community, creativity and access. We’re investing in tools that help adult creators, like our SpicyFanz program, where content creators and educators can run their own branded web stores with over 1,000 products, and earn commissions on both sales and referrals. They can even use the Spicy Cantaloupe service to offer custom toys based on themselves and can add items from the handmade shops of Spicerack Market to their personal wish lists for their fans to purchase for them as gifts, while keeping their personal information private.”
Goldstein also hints that he is searching for investors to help the platform grow and build upon its rapidly expanding user base. Above all, he emphasizes his avowed mission to uplift handmade artistry, celebrate pleasure and help people feel more connected to their bodies and their partners.
“Spicerack isn’t just about adult products,” declares Goldstein. “It’s about reclaiming pleasure, supporting small businesses and creating a safe, thriving ecosystem for the makers and consumers who’ve been underserved for far too long.”
