April 7, 2024 • 23 mins
Join me, Wayne, the founder of E-Stim Systems and the Host of 'I Make SexToys', as I delve into the often misunderstood world of the adult industry. I try to address some of the pervasive taboos surrounding businesses like mine and sheds light on the challenges faced in establishing legitimacy in the marketplace.
From navigating payment processing hurdles to dealing with societal misconceptions, I let give you a firsthand account of the trials and triumphs encountered while starting and running a business in the adult industry. Discover the intricacies of securing merchant accounts, overcoming advertising restrictions, and even hiring staff amidst societal stigma.
Through anecdotes and insights, Wayne offers a glimpse into the realities of operating within this unique sector, debunking myths and sharing valuable lessons learned along the way. Whether you're a curious observer or an aspiring entrepreneur, this podcast provides a rare glimpse into the inner workings of an often overlooked industry. Join me as I uncover some of the truths behind the taboos and explore the complexities of running an adult business in the modern world. Don't miss out on this eye-opening discussion.
Subscribe now for more exclusive content and industry insights!
Drop us a message, we cannot reply directly but it would be great to here from you
"I make sex toys" is a the personal podcast of Wayne Allen, the Director of E-Stim Systems. The content of these podcasts are not designed to be Explicit or Erotic but we may discuss adult topics and therefore these podcasts are not suitable for children or those of a nervous disposition. You have been warned.
If you are interested in E-Stim Systems the company, or any of our products, have a look at https://www.e-stim.me/buy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Wayne (00:00):
Hello, it's Wayne here from I'm XX Toys, and today I'm
gonna tell you about dealingwith some of the issues
regarding the taboos aroundrunning a business within the
adult industry, taboos and theadult industry.
One of the problems we havewith any business running in the
adult industry is people'sperceptions of it.
(00:21):
People fundamentally thinkwe're all having sex, we're all
prostitutes, we're all sellingour bodies, we're all having sex
, we're all prostitutes, we'reall selling our bodies, we're
all doing drugs, we've all gotdodgy money and that's a big
issue when you're actuallytrying to create a legitimate
business.
Now, if individuals think thisis not a massive issue, it's
just a fact that we need toeducate them as to the fact that
we're actually running a decentbusiness.
The problem is when you have todeal with other organisations
(00:42):
and they think it or theirpolicies are laid out in such a
way that the company itselfthinks it.
Now, the first thing you needgenerally when you start up a
business is a bank account.
Now, a bank account is some wayto store your money, but it
also provides you with afacility to receive money from
customers.
One of the things we have ismost of our business is
conducted online.
In fact, all of our business isconducted online.
(01:03):
We do have stores.
They conduct business onlineand face-to-face but payment
systems that's down to them, butwe, as a business, we conduct
business online.
Therefore, we need to have someway for you, the customer, to
actually receive the goods andsend us some money Actually send
us some money first and thenreceive the goods.
That's the way it normallyworks, but there needs to be
some facility.
Now, these days, there arequite a few different ways of
(01:26):
doing it, but there are stilltwo main ones, one of which is
credit cards and the other oneis PayPal.
Now, when we first started,paypal was still linked to eBay,
and most of the policies thatPayPal created were based around
the policies that eBay wereusing, and eBay didn't really
like adult goods.
If you tried to sell somethingon eBay that was adult, then
they would frown upon it andsuddenly you'd discover that
(01:47):
your listings were being pulled.
We didn't really do anything oneBay because we didn't like not
having control over what wasshown.
We didn't like them havingcontrol over our policies in
terms of returns.
We couldn't do lifetimeguarantees, because they just
assumed that everything justneeded to be returned and fully
refunded.
It just didn't work for us, sowe never really used eBay.
Paypal weren't too bad.
(02:07):
When we actually got into thebanks and started discussing
with the bank that we would liketo run a business and we'd like
to use you to facilitate ourbusiness, that wasn't a massive
issue.
Then we got into an interestingarea.
Give you a little bit ofbackground here and give you a
little bit of education, becauseyou might not know how these
things work.
When you go and pay forsomething using a credit card,
if you're doing it face to face,you'll come up with a little
(02:30):
machine.
You put your card in themachine, you put your PIN number
in, or these days you have tapand go.
That machine then talks to amerchant provider and the
merchant provider is the one whoactually does the card
processing.
In a few days time, thatmerchant provider will then give
us or give our bank the money.
The problem we had was trying tofind a company that would allow
us to use them as a merchantprovider, so they're the ones
(02:53):
who provide the system that goesfrom the machine to our bank.
We managed to find one company,which was a company called
world pay, and they were astartup at the time.
I mean I say startup, that waspretty big, but they were a
startup at the time.
I mean I say startup, they werepretty big, but they were just
getting into the industry.
They were just getting intoonline payments and things like
that.
So we managed to find them.
The problem with WorldPay isthey turned around and said
(03:13):
we're going to give you 30 days,which means that when you pay
WorldPay for the products thatyou've just bought from us, they
will hold onto that money for30 days in case you decide to do
a charge back or in case itturns out to be fraudulent, so
they can immediately give youyour money back and we get
nothing.
But the problem is we have towait 30 days and for a lot of
businesses, particularly startupbusinesses, that's a big chunk
(03:35):
of time to wait for money forsomething that has already been
given to the customer and wehave to wait for it.
And I have heard since thenthat some of the companies there
isn't just one merchantprovider these days, there's
quite a few, but some of thesecompanies are actually going up
to 60 days not 30 days, not 45days, but 60 days before the
store or the manufacturer canget any money, which I think is
(03:56):
a bit over the top, guys.
However, we managed to findWellpay and Wellpay were quite
happy with us and I think in thefirst year we probably had one
charge back.
Now, generally, we didn't do toobadly because both the banks
and WorldPay decided thatbecause we were selling tangible
goods, ie goods that physicallyexisted, this was less of an
(04:17):
issue than a lot of the adultindustry.
If we were selling digitalservices or we were selling porn
, that would be completelydifferent and that's the sort of
thing they really, reallydidn't like, because there's
just nothing there.
It doesn't really exist.
Yes, it does exist.
It's a file, but it was a loteasier for people to perform
fraudulent transactions on those.
And then, when you get intothings like prostitution or
(04:38):
escorts or whatever you want tocall it, that really really got
into big issues with paymentproviders.
That's why in 2024, there'sstill payment providers out
there who, the minute they seeanything adult, they go oh no,
I'm not going to touch it.
If any of you out there knowabout the website called fetlife
, fetlife is probably thebiggest fetish contact website
in the world.
We do actually advertise onthere.
(05:00):
Fetlife have major, majorissues with payment providers
and and they spent months, ifnot years, gaining a payment
provider and then losing apayment provider.
They were some very convolutedways of getting money out of
people for memberships, purelyand simply because nobody would
touch them with a barge pod,because it was adult.
Anyway, back to WorldPay.
We were doing quite well forprobably two, three years, no
(05:22):
major issues, and then suddenlywe get a letter saying we're
closing any account that's to dowith adult, which was a bit of
a shock.
And it wasn't just us.
Initially you think, oh, whathave I done?
But no, it was the adultindustry across the board.
They were basically settingthemselves up to be purchased
and they decided that the adultindustry was an area which they
didn't want to have any contactwith.
(05:43):
Therefore, no, they were goingto drop us all.
This was a bit of an issue.
However, we then went to ourbank and said hello, mr Bank
Manager, pretty pretty, pleasecan we have a merchant account?
And they would look at the bankand go yeah, we don't see any
issues here.
We've seen your track record,we've seen the fact that you've
got money going into the bank.
It looks quite healthy.
Okay, here you can have aStreamline account, and
(06:03):
Streamline is another merchantaccount.
Great, no problem.
Thank you very much, Seteverything up on the new system.
In the meantime, worldpay werebought out, disappeared off into
the wide blue yonder for awhile and then WorldPay
reappeared on the scene.
Because world pay were buyingstreamline oh dear.
(06:24):
And we did panic a little bitand go what's going to happen
here?
But the answer is, yeah, worldpay were purchased by another
company, which was much, muchlarger, and eventually purchased
streamline as well, and allthey were really interested in
is how much money was coming in.
And we are still with aderivative of world pay,
straight, I think now they callthemselves Elivon or something
like that.
We're still there.
We're still running and managedto survive the changes to the
(06:46):
payment systems.
We still use PayPal.
Paypal is probably, for us, oneof the nicest payment systems
because they don't hold ontoyour money for silly amounts of
time, providing you follow therules when you purchase a
product and when you send aproduct to a customer.
And if you are consideringusing PayPal, please, please,
please check their terms andconditions, especially when it
(07:07):
comes to sending product out,because if you don't follow
their terms and conditions andthe customer makes a complaint
like a product isn't asdescribed or a product hasn't
arrived, you will quite simplylose everything straight away,
because if you haven't followedPayPal's rules, they will
automatically find in thedirection of the customer.
However, if you have followedthe rules and you've done
(07:28):
everything correctly nine timesout of 10, then PayPal generally
find in your favor because youfollowed the rules.
That's payment systems.
What else did we have issueswith?
Strangely enough, one thing wedidn't have issues with was
premises.
In terms of when we moved fromthe garage that we were
operating in when we firststarted to a business centre, I
spoke to the business centre.
Now this business centre isWenter Business Centre in
(07:50):
Watford.
They still exist and theybasically offer startup units.
So it's a business unit on arolling lease.
You pay a monthly fee and youget space and you can run a
business from there.
That's what they're designed todo.
In all honesty, if it wasn'tfor them, we wouldn't be here.
So big shout out to WinterBusiness Centre in Watford Great
bunch of people.
We still actually do have somepremises over there.
(08:10):
We've got a studio which,strange enough, is not the
studio I'm working from today,but we do have one over there.
When I went to Wenta andexplained what I was doing.
They were quite interested.
In fact they found it quitefunny.
Their answer was well, is itlegitimate, is it legal?
Yep, that's how we got ourfirst premises.
When we moved to a largepremises and moved into our
lease workshops which is wherewe are now and I think we've
been there just over 10 yearsjust signed a new lease Again,
(08:33):
they were just more interestedin whether we could actually pay
the rent.
So some people out there areactually quite enlightened as to
what the adult industry does.
We had a printer who was thecomplete opposite.
When we first started, wewanted to have some brochures
printed and some flyers and someleaflets and we spent ages with
a artist getting some bits andpieces done, went to a local
(08:55):
printer and he took two weeks totell us that he wasn't going to
have anything to do with thisdisgusting business.
And we were like what Sorry?
He says.
Basically he put adult andthought he was selling
prostitute cards or somethingand that was it.
That's the last of the businessyou'll ever get from us and
strangely enough, they no longerexist.
The printer we do use yep,they're still around.
(09:16):
Other things that people thinkabout running an adult business
Please, please, please sendeverything in plagiarized
packaging.
Do people really think we aregoing to send out product with a
big sign on it saying look,everyone I make sex toys is
sending you something.
Of course we're going to tryand send out product in discreet
and plain packaging.
(09:36):
We are not stupid.
We know that people don't wanttheir neighbours to know what's
going on.
However, there is a case wherepeople sometimes get a little
bit paranoid.
Please don't assume that thepostman is going to know what's
in your package and we have thesame sometimes if a package ever
goes to a location where theyhave to be picked up from the
post office.
Now, this normally occurs whenyou ask for home delivery and
(10:00):
you're in a location where theycan't deliver to home.
We generally ask for asignature because we don't want
the packages disappearing andtherefore you have to go to a
local post office to pick it up.
And again, people have thisidea that, oh, I can't go to the
post office and pick it upbecause the person behind the
window they'll know what's inthe package.
They don't.
It's a box and they probablysee 150 brown boxes every single
(10:21):
day.
Yes, if we send stuff overseasand send it through customs, we
do have to put some descriptionon it.
That is the law, unfortunately.
We can't avoid that.
But we don't put sex toys.
We put signal generator onbecause technically that's what
power boxes are.
They are an electronic signalgenerator.
Therefore we put the standardcustoms code for electronic
(10:42):
signal generator and most of thetime there's no issue.
The times there are in issueswhen they decide that, despite
brexit and all the otheragreements they're floating out
there, they want to charge someform of duty on it and then,
yeah, it does get a little bitconvoluted, but then they don't
care what's inside the box, aslong as it's not drugs or guns
or something.
As far as they're concerned,it's an electronic device.
End of story.
(11:03):
Other things that happen withinour industry well, some of the
funny ones are when companiesphone up and ask for donations.
Now, this is something thatprobably happens to most
companies.
You get somebody phoning up andsaying that we're xyz from xZ
charity and we'd like a donation, and what they're doing is
they're expecting to get someform of donation, either
(11:23):
financial or products orsomething like that, and they
probably have a big list ofcompanies in their local area.
They cold call the companiesand hope they're going to get
something out of it.
The problem occurs when theycall us.
Let's face it, we're an adultcompany.
We make, make sex toys and mostof the time our products are
possibly not going to be how doI say this suitable for some of
(11:44):
the charities or the causes thatthey're asking for.
The problem is they still tryit on and sometimes they lie.
Generally I don't answer thephone because I'm running around
like the proverbial, designingthings and trying to get things
to work and fixing things likethat.
So they'll phone the office andthey're like oh yes, I spoke to
your managing director and hesaid he's going to donate to
(12:04):
this cause.
And they're like really now,because, one, they know if I was
going to donate to a particularcause I would have told them
already.
And two, we just don't donateto the causes.
That just phone us up out ofthe blue.
Then Then you hear some veryinteresting quote selling
techniques, unquote.
One of the funniest ones is thehi, yes, I'm Joe Bloggs from
the local police and we're doingthis and the first thing is you
(12:26):
listen and go oh, my god, it'sthe police.
Then they sort of go oh, we'renot actually the police, but
we're working with the police toraise funds for a local child's
football charity.
And how can I help?
Well, I'd spoken to yourmanaging director and he said
that he's going to donate someof your products to our charity.
Really, yes, okay.
(12:48):
So could you explain to me howsex toys are going to work with
a children's football charity?
Hello, hello, hello, ooh,they've put the phone down.
We had that several times andthat's where actually telling
people that we make sex toysbluntly is a really good way of
suddenly getting to put thephone down.
What normally happens is when wehave conversations about what
(13:09):
we do, because people ask you,what do you do?
And you sometimes have to gaugehow to say it to people
politely without causing offence, because you never, never know,
people might just get offendedbecause they don't like anything
to do with the word sex.
So what we tend to do is we doyeah, we do medical electronics,
because that's really reallyboring and, depending on how
(13:30):
they respond to that, you mightturn around and go well, that's
the official line, but what weactually do is make sex toys,
and if they kill themselveslaughing, then generally you
know that you've got a goodresponse and that's, I would say
, 80% of the time, that's whatyou get.
It's always fun when you walkaround trade shows because we go
to quite a lot of trade shows,because we're a manufacturer
Number of people who we've beento trade shows who remember us
because we're the weird companythat makes sex toys.
(13:53):
Now, advertising in general is abig issue because advertising
is one of those things you needto get the stuff out there.
It costs lots of money.
It generally only makes moneyfor the advertising companies,
doesn't make money for us,especially these days when you
try and use the traditionalmedia, but even the
non-traditional media.
So things like facebookfacebook drive me up the wall,
because facebook will probablydaily ping me and say you could
(14:17):
put this post as an advert and Iknow no, I can't.
You could put this post as anadvert.
You could boost this post Only£25 or £250.
It soon goes up quite quicklyand every so often I'll go okay,
go on.
Then Hit the boost button.
Your advert links to a site thatis pornographic.
You're going to get banned ifyou keep doing this.
Well, you did keep offering itto me.
(14:38):
Therefore, can you stopoffering it to me?
If you're not going to let medo it, I'm quite happy to pay
money to you, but if you're notgoing to let me advertise my
products on your website, I'mnot going to pay any money to
you.
I'll have to use other methodslike social media and podcasting
.
Luckily, these days, a lot ofthe advertising is effectively
word of mouth, and word of mouthand word of mouth is actually
the one thing that's worked forus, because we like to talk to
(15:00):
people, we like to haveconversations and people like to
talk to other people, and it'sone of the things we really like
to do.
It's one of the reasons why westarted doing these podcasts,
because I get to sit here with amicrophone and just talk.
It's what I do.
However, people also think thatword of mouth is something that
they can use against us, and wehave had in the past where
(15:23):
people get how do I say this alittle bit upset with some
decision that we've made, orthey feel slighted in some way,
and they do the.
I'm going to go onto socialmedia and I'm going to tell all
my friends how bad you are.
And, yeah, that generallydoesn't work because, firstly,
we see that as a threat and ifyou're threatening any of my
staff in any way, shape or form,or my business, or you start to
be rude and obnoxious.
(15:43):
That's when, as far as we'reconcerned, a line is drawn.
We will not countenance anyonebeing obnoxious or rude to any
of my staff.
Full stop, end of story.
If you want us to do anything,particularly if something's gone
slightly wrong, especially ifsomething's gone slightly wrong,
especially if something's goneslightly wrong and actually it's
probably your side and not ours, but we're still trying to help
, be nice or at least be civil,and certainly don't start trying
(16:06):
to threaten us with oh, I'mgoing to go onto social media
and tell everyone, because itreally doesn't work.
What we normally do in thatsituation is go fine, no problem
, thank you very much.
We're no longer going to dealwith you.
And if they then decide to startposting on social media, we do
exactly the same, except we'llgenerally give our side of the
story.
And because we try to bereasonable, because we try to do
(16:30):
the right thing, yeah, most ofthe time it works.
Sometimes we do actually makemistakes, and I'll put my hands
up.
Yep, we make mistakes, and ifwe make mistakes, we will do our
best to rectify them.
However, if you start postingon social media, what tends to
happen is, firstly, people don'tgive the whole story.
They'll only give their side ofthe story, which is fair enough
(16:51):
because that's what they wishto post, but they tend to forget
little key elements.
That then gives us theopportunity to turn around and
say excuse me, really sorry, butwe feel your recollection of
this conversation might not bethe same as ours and we're quite
happy to have that conversationin public, in front of everyone
else, because we're not one ofthese companies One thing,
(17:12):
changing the subject slightlybecause we're not one of these
companies who wants to hideeverything, we're quite happy to
have a discussion with somebodyabout our failings or things
that might have gone wrong inpublic.
Too many times I see companieson social media, particularly
things like Twitter, wheresomebody makes a complaint and
the first thing the company saysis oh, contact us on DM,
(17:34):
contact us so we can get it outof the public eye.
My answer to that is I'm quitehappy to have the discussion
with people in public.
Obviously, if you have privateinformation, that's the time to
DM the company and we'll sayplease, dm us all the details so
I can investigate, because itmight be they're having an issue
with something that I knowabsolutely nothing about.
But I'm quite happy to have aconversation with people in
(17:55):
public about what went wrong andwhat we can do, and because we
generally try and do the rightthing.
Other people see thatconversation and what happens
when somebody's ranting andraving on social media about how
bad we are and how all this isrubbish and all this is shit,
etc.
Etc.
Is they make themselves looksilly Because people see what
they're posting.
(18:15):
People see what we're postingand the people who generally
don't have any axe to grind arelooking at it and going yeah,
you're a bit of an idiot, aren'tyou really?
Now, yeah, they could bereferring to us as being a bit
of an idiot, but we've beendoing it a while.
We try to do our best, butpeople rant and rave on social
media and it's like it's notreally the way that actually
occurred.
Generally, if people are goingto threaten us, it's already
(18:38):
gone beyond the point of noreturn anyway.
Sometimes and that has occurredwhere people have done that I
still try and reply to them andgo look, please don't threaten
us.
But this is what I would liketo do, because here's a solution
.
I don't want unhappy customers.
I want people to be happy or,at the very least, I want people
to be accepting of thesituation and nine times out of
10, they'll settle down, we'llcome up with some idea that
(19:01):
helps them and makes them happy,because at the end of the day,
I'd like happy customers, but ifyou're going to threaten us,
just don't, because it justdoesn't work.
Now the good news is I'm nearlyat the end of this podcast.
I actually have a big, longlist of stuff that I was going
to talk about.
I've got two things to add, oneof which was a question that I
was asked the other day and Iwas like, oh, I've never really
(19:22):
explained that one.
I am Eastim Sai on the forum,and somebody said to me why are
you, eastim Sai, on the forum?
Why are you weighing everywhereelse?
The reason Eastim Sai came aboutis when I first started the
business, I worked part-time ina primary school.
I was also working inuniversity and part of the
university's remit was doingoutreach to primary schools for
(19:43):
IT.
So I worked in a primary schoolfor IT and I knew that the
staff would be out and about andthey'd look on the internet and
the minute they see my nameattached to my new business,
that might cause a few issues.
It certainly might cause a fewissues with parents, because
parents think all teachers aresqueaky clean and I didn't want
to offend anyone.
(20:03):
So that's where East Impsi camefrom.
It was my pseudonym that Iwould use on social media until
I actually started running thebusiness full time.
Then Wayne came more to thefore and now that days it's a
case of yeah, if I'm talking toyou generally, it's Wayne, if
I'm on the forum, it tends to beEast Impsi, because that's how
the account is set up.
But there's no issue with thesplit between Wayne and East
(20:23):
Impsi.
We are the same person.
So I hope that clears things up.
I never really realised it wasan issue with some people, but
anyway, yeah, east Impsi andWayne are the same person.
Lastly, I'm mentioning thisparticular one because it came
up very recently.
We have a number of staff.
We have at the moment 12 staffand that's a split between sales
, manufacturing, electronics,packing etc.
(20:45):
So we have 12 staff and we veryrecently put out an advert for
a new member of staff.
We had a gentleman in ourpacking department who sadly
left us due to ill health, so wehad to replace him.
So we put an advert out forwarehouse packing.
And well, firstly, we had 572applicants yes, 572 applicants
(21:06):
which was a bit of a lot and ittook a while to wade through
them, and we whittled them downto about 20 for interviews.
The concerning thing was, on atleast two occasions when we got
to do interviews, they turned upand they hadn't a clue what we
did, and I mean they hadn'tlooked up.
And we provided the companyname on the job system so they
(21:29):
could quite easily look us up,but they hadn't looked us up,
which, firstly, I think from aninterview perspective is a
really bad thing.
But then somebody actuallyrefused to turn up for an
interview because of what we did, and it's like you're in the
packing department, we thing.
But then somebody actuallyrefused to turn up for an
interview because of what we did, and it's like you're in the
packing department.
We're not asking you to testthe products, and even our
testers don't test the productsthe way that some people think
they test the products.
You're in the packingdepartment.
You're not going to be testingthe products.
(21:51):
You're not going to be talkingto customers about their sexual
activities.
You're packing orders anyway.
We did manage to find one personfor packing and he's great guy.
He's only just started, but welove him and I think he's
enjoying what he does.
Certainly it's been a biteye-opening when you get the
decimator out and they realizehow big a decimator really is.
But he is a great guy and it'sgreat to find staff out there
(22:13):
who are enthusiastic as to whatwe do and have come and joined
our team and we love it.
It's brilliant.
Anyway, that is the end of mypodcast.
I'm gonna have to edit it alldown now so it's actually
listenable.
If you like what I'm doing,please don't forget to click
whatever buttons they exist onyour podcast listening system,
and it'd be great if you'd liketo leave a review.
I think reviews can be left onspotify and apple podcasts, but
(22:37):
if you can, please leave a and Ihope this has been a bit
informative and evenentertaining, because that's why
I'm doing this.
It's an outlet for us to letyou know some of the background
behind some of the things we do,and it's great fun and I'm
enjoying it.
So my name's Wayne, also knownas Eastimpsi.
But thanks for listening, besafe and have fun.
Bye.
(22:57):
Be safe and have fun.
Bye.
Hello, it's Wayne here from I'm XX Toys, and today I'm
gonna tell you about dealingwith some of the issues
regarding the taboos aroundrunning a business within the
adult industry, taboos and theadult industry.
One of the problems we havewith any business running in the
adult industry is people'sperceptions of it.
(00:21):
People fundamentally thinkwe're all having sex, we're all
prostitutes, we're all sellingour bodies, we're all having sex
, we're all prostitutes, we'reall selling our bodies, we're
all doing drugs, we've all gotdodgy money and that's a big
issue when you're actuallytrying to create a legitimate
business.
Now, if individuals think thisis not a massive issue, it's
just a fact that we need toeducate them as to the fact that
we're actually running a decentbusiness.
The problem is when you have todeal with other organisations
(00:42):
and they think it or theirpolicies are laid out in such a
way that the company itselfthinks it.
Now, the first thing you needgenerally when you start up a
business is a bank account.
Now, a bank account is some wayto store your money, but it
also provides you with afacility to receive money from
customers.
One of the things we have ismost of our business is
conducted online.
In fact, all of our business isconducted online.
(01:03):
We do have stores.
They conduct business onlineand face-to-face but payment
systems that's down to them, butwe, as a business, we conduct
business online.
Therefore, we need to have someway for you, the customer, to
actually receive the goods andsend us some money Actually send
us some money first and thenreceive the goods.
That's the way it normallyworks, but there needs to be
some facility.
Now, these days, there arequite a few different ways of
(01:26):
doing it, but there are stilltwo main ones, one of which is
credit cards and the other oneis PayPal.
Now, when we first started,paypal was still linked to eBay,
and most of the policies thatPayPal created were based around
the policies that eBay wereusing, and eBay didn't really
like adult goods.
If you tried to sell somethingon eBay that was adult, then
they would frown upon it andsuddenly you'd discover that
(01:47):
your listings were being pulled.
We didn't really do anything oneBay because we didn't like not
having control over what wasshown.
We didn't like them havingcontrol over our policies in
terms of returns.
We couldn't do lifetimeguarantees, because they just
assumed that everything justneeded to be returned and fully
refunded.
It just didn't work for us, sowe never really used eBay.
Paypal weren't too bad.
(02:07):
When we actually got into thebanks and started discussing
with the bank that we would liketo run a business and we'd like
to use you to facilitate ourbusiness, that wasn't a massive
issue.
Then we got into an interestingarea.
Give you a little bit ofbackground here and give you a
little bit of education, becauseyou might not know how these
things work.
When you go and pay forsomething using a credit card,
if you're doing it face to face,you'll come up with a little
(02:30):
machine.
You put your card in themachine, you put your PIN number
in, or these days you have tapand go.
That machine then talks to amerchant provider and the
merchant provider is the one whoactually does the card
processing.
In a few days time, thatmerchant provider will then give
us or give our bank the money.
The problem we had was trying tofind a company that would allow
us to use them as a merchantprovider, so they're the ones
(02:53):
who provide the system that goesfrom the machine to our bank.
We managed to find one company,which was a company called
world pay, and they were astartup at the time.
I mean I say startup, that waspretty big, but they were a
startup at the time.
I mean I say startup, they werepretty big, but they were just
getting into the industry.
They were just getting intoonline payments and things like
that.
So we managed to find them.
The problem with WorldPay isthey turned around and said
(03:13):
we're going to give you 30 days,which means that when you pay
WorldPay for the products thatyou've just bought from us, they
will hold onto that money for30 days in case you decide to do
a charge back or in case itturns out to be fraudulent, so
they can immediately give youyour money back and we get
nothing.
But the problem is we have towait 30 days and for a lot of
businesses, particularly startupbusinesses, that's a big chunk
(03:35):
of time to wait for money forsomething that has already been
given to the customer and wehave to wait for it.
And I have heard since thenthat some of the companies there
isn't just one merchantprovider these days, there's
quite a few, but some of thesecompanies are actually going up
to 60 days not 30 days, not 45days, but 60 days before the
store or the manufacturer canget any money, which I think is
(03:56):
a bit over the top, guys.
However, we managed to findWellpay and Wellpay were quite
happy with us and I think in thefirst year we probably had one
charge back.
Now, generally, we didn't do toobadly because both the banks
and WorldPay decided thatbecause we were selling tangible
goods, ie goods that physicallyexisted, this was less of an
(04:17):
issue than a lot of the adultindustry.
If we were selling digitalservices or we were selling porn
, that would be completelydifferent and that's the sort of
thing they really, reallydidn't like, because there's
just nothing there.
It doesn't really exist.
Yes, it does exist.
It's a file, but it was a loteasier for people to perform
fraudulent transactions on those.
And then, when you get intothings like prostitution or
(04:38):
escorts or whatever you want tocall it, that really really got
into big issues with paymentproviders.
That's why in 2024, there'sstill payment providers out
there who, the minute they seeanything adult, they go oh no,
I'm not going to touch it.
If any of you out there knowabout the website called fetlife
, fetlife is probably thebiggest fetish contact website
in the world.
We do actually advertise onthere.
(05:00):
Fetlife have major, majorissues with payment providers
and and they spent months, ifnot years, gaining a payment
provider and then losing apayment provider.
They were some very convolutedways of getting money out of
people for memberships, purelyand simply because nobody would
touch them with a barge pod,because it was adult.
Anyway, back to WorldPay.
We were doing quite well forprobably two, three years, no
(05:22):
major issues, and then suddenlywe get a letter saying we're
closing any account that's to dowith adult, which was a bit of
a shock.
And it wasn't just us.
Initially you think, oh, whathave I done?
But no, it was the adultindustry across the board.
They were basically settingthemselves up to be purchased
and they decided that the adultindustry was an area which they
didn't want to have any contactwith.
(05:43):
Therefore, no, they were goingto drop us all.
This was a bit of an issue.
However, we then went to ourbank and said hello, mr Bank
Manager, pretty pretty, pleasecan we have a merchant account?
And they would look at the bankand go yeah, we don't see any
issues here.
We've seen your track record,we've seen the fact that you've
got money going into the bank.
It looks quite healthy.
Okay, here you can have aStreamline account, and
(06:03):
Streamline is another merchantaccount.
Great, no problem.
Thank you very much, Seteverything up on the new system.
In the meantime, worldpay werebought out, disappeared off into
the wide blue yonder for awhile and then WorldPay
reappeared on the scene.
Because world pay were buyingstreamline oh dear.
(06:24):
And we did panic a little bitand go what's going to happen
here?
But the answer is, yeah, worldpay were purchased by another
company, which was much, muchlarger, and eventually purchased
streamline as well, and allthey were really interested in
is how much money was coming in.
And we are still with aderivative of world pay,
straight, I think now they callthemselves Elivon or something
like that.
We're still there.
We're still running and managedto survive the changes to the
(06:46):
payment systems.
We still use PayPal.
Paypal is probably, for us, oneof the nicest payment systems
because they don't hold ontoyour money for silly amounts of
time, providing you follow therules when you purchase a
product and when you send aproduct to a customer.
And if you are consideringusing PayPal, please, please,
please check their terms andconditions, especially when it
(07:07):
comes to sending product out,because if you don't follow
their terms and conditions andthe customer makes a complaint
like a product isn't asdescribed or a product hasn't
arrived, you will quite simplylose everything straight away,
because if you haven't followedPayPal's rules, they will
automatically find in thedirection of the customer.
However, if you have followedthe rules and you've done
(07:28):
everything correctly nine timesout of 10, then PayPal generally
find in your favor because youfollowed the rules.
That's payment systems.
What else did we have issueswith?
Strangely enough, one thing wedidn't have issues with was
premises.
In terms of when we moved fromthe garage that we were
operating in when we firststarted to a business centre, I
spoke to the business centre.
Now this business centre isWenter Business Centre in
(07:50):
Watford.
They still exist and theybasically offer startup units.
So it's a business unit on arolling lease.
You pay a monthly fee and youget space and you can run a
business from there.
That's what they're designed todo.
In all honesty, if it wasn'tfor them, we wouldn't be here.
So big shout out to WinterBusiness Centre in Watford Great
bunch of people.
We still actually do have somepremises over there.
(08:10):
We've got a studio which,strange enough, is not the
studio I'm working from today,but we do have one over there.
When I went to Wenta andexplained what I was doing.
They were quite interested.
In fact they found it quitefunny.
Their answer was well, is itlegitimate, is it legal?
Yep, that's how we got ourfirst premises.
When we moved to a largepremises and moved into our
lease workshops which is wherewe are now and I think we've
been there just over 10 yearsjust signed a new lease Again,
(08:33):
they were just more interestedin whether we could actually pay
the rent.
So some people out there areactually quite enlightened as to
what the adult industry does.
We had a printer who was thecomplete opposite.
When we first started, wewanted to have some brochures
printed and some flyers and someleaflets and we spent ages with
a artist getting some bits andpieces done, went to a local
(08:55):
printer and he took two weeks totell us that he wasn't going to
have anything to do with thisdisgusting business.
And we were like what Sorry?
He says.
Basically he put adult andthought he was selling
prostitute cards or somethingand that was it.
That's the last of the businessyou'll ever get from us and
strangely enough, they no longerexist.
The printer we do use yep,they're still around.
(09:16):
Other things that people thinkabout running an adult business
Please, please, please sendeverything in plagiarized
packaging.
Do people really think we aregoing to send out product with a
big sign on it saying look,everyone I make sex toys is
sending you something.
Of course we're going to tryand send out product in discreet
and plain packaging.
(09:36):
We are not stupid.
We know that people don't wanttheir neighbours to know what's
going on.
However, there is a case wherepeople sometimes get a little
bit paranoid.
Please don't assume that thepostman is going to know what's
in your package and we have thesame sometimes if a package ever
goes to a location where theyhave to be picked up from the
post office.
Now, this normally occurs whenyou ask for home delivery and
(10:00):
you're in a location where theycan't deliver to home.
We generally ask for asignature because we don't want
the packages disappearing andtherefore you have to go to a
local post office to pick it up.
And again, people have thisidea that, oh, I can't go to the
post office and pick it upbecause the person behind the
window they'll know what's inthe package.
They don't.
It's a box and they probablysee 150 brown boxes every single
(10:21):
day.
Yes, if we send stuff overseasand send it through customs, we
do have to put some descriptionon it.
That is the law, unfortunately.
We can't avoid that.
But we don't put sex toys.
We put signal generator onbecause technically that's what
power boxes are.
They are an electronic signalgenerator.
Therefore we put the standardcustoms code for electronic
(10:42):
signal generator and most of thetime there's no issue.
The times there are in issueswhen they decide that, despite
brexit and all the otheragreements they're floating out
there, they want to charge someform of duty on it and then,
yeah, it does get a little bitconvoluted, but then they don't
care what's inside the box, aslong as it's not drugs or guns
or something.
As far as they're concerned,it's an electronic device.
End of story.
(11:03):
Other things that happen withinour industry well, some of the
funny ones are when companiesphone up and ask for donations.
Now, this is something thatprobably happens to most
companies.
You get somebody phoning up andsaying that we're xyz from xZ
charity and we'd like a donation, and what they're doing is
they're expecting to get someform of donation, either
(11:23):
financial or products orsomething like that, and they
probably have a big list ofcompanies in their local area.
They cold call the companiesand hope they're going to get
something out of it.
The problem occurs when theycall us.
Let's face it, we're an adultcompany.
We make, make sex toys and mostof the time our products are
possibly not going to be how doI say this suitable for some of
(11:44):
the charities or the causes thatthey're asking for.
The problem is they still tryit on and sometimes they lie.
Generally I don't answer thephone because I'm running around
like the proverbial, designingthings and trying to get things
to work and fixing things likethat.
So they'll phone the office andthey're like oh yes, I spoke to
your managing director and hesaid he's going to donate to
(12:04):
this cause.
And they're like really now,because, one, they know if I was
going to donate to a particularcause I would have told them
already.
And two, we just don't donateto the causes.
That just phone us up out ofthe blue.
Then Then you hear some veryinteresting quote selling
techniques, unquote.
One of the funniest ones is thehi, yes, I'm Joe Bloggs from
the local police and we're doingthis and the first thing is you
(12:26):
listen and go oh, my god, it'sthe police.
Then they sort of go oh, we'renot actually the police, but
we're working with the police toraise funds for a local child's
football charity.
And how can I help?
Well, I'd spoken to yourmanaging director and he said
that he's going to donate someof your products to our charity.
Really, yes, okay.
(12:48):
So could you explain to me howsex toys are going to work with
a children's football charity?
Hello, hello, hello, ooh,they've put the phone down.
We had that several times andthat's where actually telling
people that we make sex toysbluntly is a really good way of
suddenly getting to put thephone down.
What normally happens is when wehave conversations about what
(13:09):
we do, because people ask you,what do you do?
And you sometimes have to gaugehow to say it to people
politely without causing offence, because you never, never know,
people might just get offendedbecause they don't like anything
to do with the word sex.
So what we tend to do is we doyeah, we do medical electronics,
because that's really reallyboring and, depending on how
(13:30):
they respond to that, you mightturn around and go well, that's
the official line, but what weactually do is make sex toys,
and if they kill themselveslaughing, then generally you
know that you've got a goodresponse and that's, I would say
, 80% of the time, that's whatyou get.
It's always fun when you walkaround trade shows because we go
to quite a lot of trade shows,because we're a manufacturer
Number of people who we've beento trade shows who remember us
because we're the weird companythat makes sex toys.
(13:53):
Now, advertising in general is abig issue because advertising
is one of those things you needto get the stuff out there.
It costs lots of money.
It generally only makes moneyfor the advertising companies,
doesn't make money for us,especially these days when you
try and use the traditionalmedia, but even the
non-traditional media.
So things like facebookfacebook drive me up the wall,
because facebook will probablydaily ping me and say you could
(14:17):
put this post as an advert and Iknow no, I can't.
You could put this post as anadvert.
You could boost this post Only£25 or £250.
It soon goes up quite quicklyand every so often I'll go okay,
go on.
Then Hit the boost button.
Your advert links to a site thatis pornographic.
You're going to get banned ifyou keep doing this.
Well, you did keep offering itto me.
(14:38):
Therefore, can you stopoffering it to me?
If you're not going to let medo it, I'm quite happy to pay
money to you, but if you're notgoing to let me advertise my
products on your website, I'mnot going to pay any money to
you.
I'll have to use other methodslike social media and podcasting
.
Luckily, these days, a lot ofthe advertising is effectively
word of mouth, and word of mouthand word of mouth is actually
the one thing that's worked forus, because we like to talk to
(15:00):
people, we like to haveconversations and people like to
talk to other people, and it'sone of the things we really like
to do.
It's one of the reasons why westarted doing these podcasts,
because I get to sit here with amicrophone and just talk.
It's what I do.
However, people also think thatword of mouth is something that
they can use against us, and wehave had in the past where
(15:23):
people get how do I say this alittle bit upset with some
decision that we've made, orthey feel slighted in some way,
and they do the.
I'm going to go onto socialmedia and I'm going to tell all
my friends how bad you are.
And, yeah, that generallydoesn't work because, firstly,
we see that as a threat and ifyou're threatening any of my
staff in any way, shape or form,or my business, or you start to
be rude and obnoxious.
(15:43):
That's when, as far as we'reconcerned, a line is drawn.
We will not countenance anyonebeing obnoxious or rude to any
of my staff.
Full stop, end of story.
If you want us to do anything,particularly if something's gone
slightly wrong, especially ifsomething's gone slightly wrong,
especially if something's goneslightly wrong and actually it's
probably your side and not ours, but we're still trying to help
, be nice or at least be civil,and certainly don't start trying
(16:06):
to threaten us with oh, I'mgoing to go onto social media
and tell everyone, because itreally doesn't work.
What we normally do in thatsituation is go fine, no problem
, thank you very much.
We're no longer going to dealwith you.
And if they then decide to startposting on social media, we do
exactly the same, except we'llgenerally give our side of the
story.
And because we try to bereasonable, because we try to do
(16:30):
the right thing, yeah, most ofthe time it works.
Sometimes we do actually makemistakes, and I'll put my hands
up.
Yep, we make mistakes, and ifwe make mistakes, we will do our
best to rectify them.
However, if you start postingon social media, what tends to
happen is, firstly, people don'tgive the whole story.
They'll only give their side ofthe story, which is fair enough
(16:51):
because that's what they wishto post, but they tend to forget
little key elements.
That then gives us theopportunity to turn around and
say excuse me, really sorry, butwe feel your recollection of
this conversation might not bethe same as ours and we're quite
happy to have that conversationin public, in front of everyone
else, because we're not one ofthese companies One thing,
(17:12):
changing the subject slightlybecause we're not one of these
companies who wants to hideeverything, we're quite happy to
have a discussion with somebodyabout our failings or things
that might have gone wrong inpublic.
Too many times I see companieson social media, particularly
things like Twitter, wheresomebody makes a complaint and
the first thing the company saysis oh, contact us on DM,
(17:34):
contact us so we can get it outof the public eye.
My answer to that is I'm quitehappy to have the discussion
with people in public.
Obviously, if you have privateinformation, that's the time to
DM the company and we'll sayplease, dm us all the details so
I can investigate, because itmight be they're having an issue
with something that I knowabsolutely nothing about.
But I'm quite happy to have aconversation with people in
(17:55):
public about what went wrong andwhat we can do, and because we
generally try and do the rightthing.
Other people see thatconversation and what happens
when somebody's ranting andraving on social media about how
bad we are and how all this isrubbish and all this is shit,
etc.
Etc.
Is they make themselves looksilly Because people see what
they're posting.
(18:15):
People see what we're postingand the people who generally
don't have any axe to grind arelooking at it and going yeah,
you're a bit of an idiot, aren'tyou really?
Now, yeah, they could bereferring to us as being a bit
of an idiot, but we've beendoing it a while.
We try to do our best, butpeople rant and rave on social
media and it's like it's notreally the way that actually
occurred.
Generally, if people are goingto threaten us, it's already
(18:38):
gone beyond the point of noreturn anyway.
Sometimes and that has occurredwhere people have done that I
still try and reply to them andgo look, please don't threaten
us.
But this is what I would liketo do, because here's a solution
.
I don't want unhappy customers.
I want people to be happy or,at the very least, I want people
to be accepting of thesituation and nine times out of
10, they'll settle down, we'llcome up with some idea that
(19:01):
helps them and makes them happy,because at the end of the day,
I'd like happy customers, but ifyou're going to threaten us,
just don't, because it justdoesn't work.
Now the good news is I'm nearlyat the end of this podcast.
I actually have a big, longlist of stuff that I was going
to talk about.
I've got two things to add, oneof which was a question that I
was asked the other day and Iwas like, oh, I've never really
(19:22):
explained that one.
I am Eastim Sai on the forum,and somebody said to me why are
you, eastim Sai, on the forum?
Why are you weighing everywhereelse?
The reason Eastim Sai came aboutis when I first started the
business, I worked part-time ina primary school.
I was also working inuniversity and part of the
university's remit was doingoutreach to primary schools for
(19:43):
IT.
So I worked in a primary schoolfor IT and I knew that the
staff would be out and about andthey'd look on the internet and
the minute they see my nameattached to my new business,
that might cause a few issues.
It certainly might cause a fewissues with parents, because
parents think all teachers aresqueaky clean and I didn't want
to offend anyone.
(20:03):
So that's where East Impsi camefrom.
It was my pseudonym that Iwould use on social media until
I actually started running thebusiness full time.
Then Wayne came more to thefore and now that days it's a
case of yeah, if I'm talking toyou generally, it's Wayne, if
I'm on the forum, it tends to beEast Impsi, because that's how
the account is set up.
But there's no issue with thesplit between Wayne and East
(20:23):
Impsi.
We are the same person.
So I hope that clears things up.
I never really realised it wasan issue with some people, but
anyway, yeah, east Impsi andWayne are the same person.
Lastly, I'm mentioning thisparticular one because it came
up very recently.
We have a number of staff.
We have at the moment 12 staffand that's a split between sales
, manufacturing, electronics,packing etc.
(20:45):
So we have 12 staff and we veryrecently put out an advert for
a new member of staff.
We had a gentleman in ourpacking department who sadly
left us due to ill health, so wehad to replace him.
So we put an advert out forwarehouse packing.
And well, firstly, we had 572applicants yes, 572 applicants
(21:06):
which was a bit of a lot and ittook a while to wade through
them, and we whittled them downto about 20 for interviews.
The concerning thing was, on atleast two occasions when we got
to do interviews, they turned upand they hadn't a clue what we
did, and I mean they hadn'tlooked up.
And we provided the companyname on the job system so they
(21:29):
could quite easily look us up,but they hadn't looked us up,
which, firstly, I think from aninterview perspective is a
really bad thing.
But then somebody actuallyrefused to turn up for an
interview because of what we did, and it's like you're in the
packing department, we thing.
But then somebody actuallyrefused to turn up for an
interview because of what we did, and it's like you're in the
packing department.
We're not asking you to testthe products, and even our
testers don't test the productsthe way that some people think
they test the products.
You're in the packingdepartment.
You're not going to be testingthe products.
(21:51):
You're not going to be talkingto customers about their sexual
activities.
You're packing orders anyway.
We did manage to find one personfor packing and he's great guy.
He's only just started, but welove him and I think he's
enjoying what he does.
Certainly it's been a biteye-opening when you get the
decimator out and they realizehow big a decimator really is.
But he is a great guy and it'sgreat to find staff out there
(22:13):
who are enthusiastic as to whatwe do and have come and joined
our team and we love it.
It's brilliant.
Anyway, that is the end of mypodcast.
I'm gonna have to edit it alldown now so it's actually
listenable.
If you like what I'm doing,please don't forget to click
whatever buttons they exist onyour podcast listening system,
and it'd be great if you'd liketo leave a review.
I think reviews can be left onspotify and apple podcasts, but
(22:37):
if you can, please leave a and Ihope this has been a bit
informative and evenentertaining, because that's why
I'm doing this.
It's an outlet for us to letyou know some of the background
behind some of the things we do,and it's great fun and I'm
enjoying it.
So my name's Wayne, also knownas Eastimpsi.
But thanks for listening, besafe and have fun.
Bye.
(22:57):
Be safe and have fun.
Bye.
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