411 Movies Interview: Joel Tucker of Stockroom.com
Posted by Tony Farinella on 03.12.2008
411's Tony Farinella sits down with Joel Tucker of Stockroom.com for an exclusive interview!
If you're looking for the best sex toys on the Internet, Joel Tucker's website, stockroom.com, is the place for you. According to Joel, his company has over 4,000 products in their warehouse. In my interview with Joel Tucker, we talked about his company, his career, the Internet, and a whole lot more.
TONY: When did you decide to start this company? Did you have a moment where you said to yourself, "It's time to start this business?"
Joel Tucker: Well, there were actually a couple of moments. The first inception of the business was really when I was 21-years-old, and I was still in college, and I actually went to a local sex shop with a girlfriend of mine to buy some really basic bondage gear, and I was gonna tie her up. That's what I wanted, that's what she wanted, and all I needed was the gear. And we went to this local shop, and the product that I had in mind that I thought I could probably buy for about 50 bucks ... they were more like two-hundred and fifty. And I remember saying something like, "I don't know if I can afford to be kinky if that's how this works." It was actually her suggestion that I maybe should try making some gear of my own. She had taken a leather working class the year before and she had a box of tools sitting in the bottom of her closet, and she loaned those to me and I was off and running. So, it became a little kind of entrepreneurial side project while I was in college. As I was finishing college was the next stage, the next moment when I was watching all my hippie friends cut their hair and put ties on and go interview with IBM, and I was like, "What are you doing? I thought you guys were the hippies, and I was kind of the more straight one in terms of appearance." At that point, I thought, "You know, I don't even know if I can show up for a 9 to 5 job." I was burned out from being in school for sixteen years and on other people's schedules and assignments and priorities, and I just felt like, "You know what, I need to be self-employed" At that point, I already had a business started, so I thought, "Well, maybe I'll just do this for a year or two while I figure out what I really wanna be when I grow up." It's been 20 years since I started the company and about 18 years since I finished college and made it a full-time enterprise.
TONY: When you first started your company, how hard was it to get it off the ground?
Joel Tucker: Well, it was a bit of a struggle. I guess I managed to make a living from fairly early on, but part of what I needed to do in order to do that was to go back home to the family farm in Southern Illinois. I actually used the family farmhouse as an incubator for my little e-commerce company. I was playing around online like in 1989 and 1990, and the Internet has been our main market since 1990. Now, that makes us one of the oldest e-commerce companies on Earth. In the early days, people would ask me, "Where are you selling this product?" And I'd say, "Well, mostly on the Internet." And the next question would be, "What's the Internet?" And I'd have to try to explain it, and generally they didn't get it. And it would end up with me saying, "You'll hear about it eventually, and you'll eventually be on it and see." But in those days, that was before the world wide web was even invented, so we were communicating via e-mail and it was mostly text. We couldn't really do much as far as photos in those days, because there wasn't enough bandwidth. By moving back to the family farm and having my expenses down to almost nothing, I was able to make a living and nurture the business and build it back up for a couple years until I felt like, "OK, I think we can handle the rent and the cost of living in Los Angeles again." And then I moved it back to L.A. So we had a couple of years in exile there. I mean, especially being out in the middle of nowhere on a family farm in Southern Illinois in the early nineties doing this kinky sex toy business over the Internet .... it was just a completely bizarre thing that nobody within a 10-mile radius would even understand. And it took a while, but eventually the Internet took off and kink went mainstream, and we were there and had been there for a while, so as the Internet exploded, we kind of blew up too. And now it all kind of makes sense. But in those days, it was a pretty eccentric and bizarre thing to be doing: Both the kink thing and the Internet thing were both underground.
TONY: How supportive were your parents?
Joel Tucker: Well, I have two parents, and I guess there's two stories there. Actually, they both made their peace with it long ago. But I remember, initially, my dad who's probably one of the straightest, vanilla, gentle, not kinky guys you could wanna meet, he was always extremely supportive of me. I mean, he wanted me to be free and to be an individual, and I told him, "I've started this little bondage gear company, and I'm selling it over the Internet." And his attitude was like, "Well, that's a surprise, and not what I would have picked for you, but it's not my job to pick for you. It's my job to try to be a supportive parent." So, he was cool about it. My mom was always more kind of socially conservative and maybe inclined to worry about what the neighbors would think, so she sort of freaked out like, "What the hell happened to you? Where did we go wrong? You were such a good student and had so much promise." And after a while, it started growing and making money and nothing horrible seemed to happen to me, and it started attracting a lot of employees and customers. Plus, the kink thing is less scary now than it was in the late eighties. And my mom's fine with it now. It still isn't necessarily what either of my parents would have picked for me, and the weird thing is it's not necessarily what I would have picked for me either ... it's just something that I sort of fell into at a certain point. But I have that kind of entrepreneurial pitbull thing. They say once a pitbull gets a hold of a bone, they just can't let it go. So that's kind of how I've been with the company. I love the company, I love the people, and it's certainly been an adventure.
TONY: Why do you think kink is more socially acceptable now?
Joel Tucker: The Internet has definitely been huge in that process, but I saw it happening before the Internet really became the sort of mainstream cultural thing that it is now. In the late eighties and early nineties, I really started to see kink bubbling up into the mainstream more and generally being less scary and more accepted. It went from something that was kind of dark and scary and mysterious to now where it's kind of like, "Yeah, some people are into that stuff." And it's not as scary as it was. In fact, when I was 21-years-old, I started participating in these panels that would go and speak to human sexuality classes and criminal justice classes about BDSM and kink and what it was, and we would finish these presentations that we'd make about all that, and then we'd get these questions like, "So, do you all worship Satan? Do you have sex with animals?" And it was like, "Wow, were they not listening to anything we just said? That's kind of scary." And then within a few years, that started to change. And the student groups started being more kind of friendly and joking around and kind of titillated by the whole thing. And, now, I can go to the same class on the same campus taught by the same professor and give the same presentation, and the responses from the students will be like, "So, wait, what's the website again? And what's the phone number?" They would have been very, very embarrassed to say that kind of thing in front of their friends in 1989, but in 2008, it seems like it's wide open. Back in the day, there might be that one kid that would sort of lurk around afterwards, pretending to finish up some homework until everyone was gone and then come up and ask us 25 more questions. But these days, the whole class is like that. But I started to see that in the early nineties with the Madonna sex book. Madonna's always trying to figure out exactly where the edge of the envelope is so she can ride it, and she did that with the kink thing. It's like Al Gore invented the Internet and Madonna invented kink. Actually, it's been there for a long time until somebody came and realized it was just about to blow up and they needed to be on the edge of that envelope taking credit for it.
TONY: Do you think it's important to use toys to keep a relationship alive?
Joel Tucker: I think certainly a lot of couples find that to be a way to get some passion and spice into a relationship. I think communication is key. A willingness to be honest about what your fantasies really are and what really does turn you on, and to communicate about it without being selfish about it, like, "Now that I've identified this kink, I want you to fulfill it exactly according to my script." What you're looking for is the common ground in areas of mutual interest and a willingness to stay present and stay honest and communicate about it, but give it some time and patience to let it develop is very helpful. I mean, I've know a lot of people in the kink scene, they may be nurturing these fantasies and they may get very intense over a period of many years before they really start talking about it or communicating it. And they have to realize that, OK, now that you are coming a little bit out of the closet, that means if you're gonna connect with another human being that it's gonna be about their interests or their feelings on the matter as much as it is yours. That well-rehearsed fantasy in your mind has to be flexible enough to let somebody else into the creative process.
TONY: In terms of kink, does anything shock you anymore?
Joel Tucker: That's rare. I mean, one reason I went into this business is, even as a teenager, for better or worse, I just kind of have had a preoccupation with human sexuality. I mean, there were the things that were turn-on's or interests for me, some of those were kind of alternative, but then there was the wide world of all the other things that people were doing that weren't necessarily turn on's for me, but they still were interesting to me, like a psychologist would be interested in just the variations of things. So, I would read about it, and in order to that, I had to suspend my judgment on certain things, and I just developed this ability to kind of get into and predict what works for different sexual kinks and sub-cultures. Even if it's not my thing, I sort of get it. I want to understand what's making that person tick. So, quite often, we'll vend at a convention and have all these crazy gizmos out on the table, and we get the question quite often, "What's this? What is this for?" And I'm always happy to answer those questions, but the thing is ... I've almost never been stumped by a sex toy. If you put it down on my desk in front of me, I'm like, "Oh, that's interesting. Here's what that must be for." Even if I've never seen it before, I can figure it out. I have been stumped once or twice, but it's really rare. I just have a natural interest in that sort of thing, and I guess it's a passion, and that's what you're supposed to do if you're gonna start a business or go into a career.
TONY: How do you come up with new ideas and keep it interesting?
Joel Tucker: A few things. For one, we just keep our eye out. We go to conventions or keep an eye on the Internet and see what's out there and what develops. If we think it's a quality product or an interesting thing, then we'll bring it in. Also, having been around so long and having achieved the size and the level of credibility in the industry that we have, we're in the favorable position of having a lot vendors come to us, including some who are looking for exclusive arrangements, like, "We don't want to sell this to just anyone, but we think you guys are the leaders in the niche of alternative or harder to find products." So, they'll come to us first and sometimes exclusively, which is cool. And then there are our own internal inventions. There have been some years where we just kind of got so busy with the operations of the business. I mean, there's never a year that's gone by that we didn't come up with a few new products, but sometimes it's slowed down to a trickle. And right now, it's picking up again.
TONY: Do you have more male customers or female customers?
Joel Tucker: With our company, it is more men than women, but it's like 55 to 65 percent men, and the female population is definitely a strong part of our clientele. I've heard some sex-toy companies say that actually more than 50 percent of their customers are women. But, I mean, they're focusing on vibrators and women buy those more. And, of course, we have all that stuff, but then we focus on the specialty items too. The leather gear, the whips and chains, electrical gear and some far out stuff. But yeah, women are definitely a big part of our clientele.
TONY: How do you help out new customers?
Joel Tucker: I do take those calls once in a while, and I'm happy to try to get a feel for where they're leaning as far as their interests or their curiosities and then we can suggest possibilities and products. And our customer service people, we put a lot of time into training them on all the products, because it's a lot to learn. I think we might have passed 4,000 products that we catalog on our website, and the items are available in our warehouse for the customer service people to handle and get to know, and we do little seminars on different areas. So, we try to organize it, and our customer service people, over time, become experts, and if there's something that they aren't an expert on yet that comes up, there's somebody sitting right next to them that they can turn to or transfer the call.
TONY: What do you think is the biggest misconception about kink?
Joel Tucker: I could give different answers to that, but I'll try this one, because I think it's kind of funny. It used to be that it was more dark and scary and now it might be, "Oh, man, I'm going to the kink scene, and it's going to be like entering The Matrix. Everybody's going to be super stylish and mysterious and look like movie stars and be really shiny." And then you go into it, and you can find that. I mean, it's not like nobody there will ever fit that description, but you'll also meet a lot of college professors or doctors and lawyers and/or nerds. The BDSM thing has a lot to do with fantasy and the imagination. Usually it comes up in fantasy or in the imagination before somebody goes out seeking it in their actual life. So, these are people that are fantasy and imagination-oriented. They might be into Sc-Fi and Fantasy, they might be Trekkies, but they're smart people, great people, and not necessarily fitting that Matrix mold all the time.
