With the holiday season upon us, there is no better time than the present to start thinking about giving the gift of pain to that special someone in your life. And by pain we mean BDSM gear. YNOT News had a chance to catch up with Dennis, the President of CY Worldwide, Inc., which is the corporation that owns BDSMStore.com and their new site, SexToyReports.com.With the holiday season upon us, there is no better time than the present to start thinking about giving the gift of pain to that special someone in your life. And by pain we mean BDSM gear. YNOT News had a chance to catch up with Dennis, the President of CY Worldwide, Inc., which is the corporation that owns BDSMStore.com and their new site, SexToyReports.com. This week Dennis talks business, gets personal and as well, shares his thoughts on the state of the industry.

YNOT: Greetings Dennis! So tell us all what your duties are as President of your company.

Dennis: Since we are a small business, being the President of the company doesn’t really mean much. My day to day duties can be anything from cleaning the toilet to signing the corporate board minutes. I do a little of everything, but I like it that way and I would imagine that if our company grows to the size that it needs someone devoted full time to CEO or President type duties, I would probably support having someone else assume those positions so that I can continue to focus on the things I like. We are working hard to get to that point… I just don’t want to be the guy at the top when we get there.

YNOT: Hmmm… very interesting. For those not in the know, what exactly is “BDSM?”

Dennis: BDSM is an acronym that combines a host of other acronyms. The B is for bondage and D for discipline, and then from the middle, D again for Dom (dominant), S for submissive. From the last two letters, we get S for sado (sadism) and M for masochism or S for slave and M for Master. Most people involved in the BDSM scene are very open minded people and very deep introspective thinkers, so it stands to reason that they are quite tolerant of how BDSM is defined. My kind of people!

YNOT: Yeah, I’ve heard it defined a few different ways, but all essentially meaning the same thing. Who are your typical customers and what are some of your hottest selling items?

Dennis: Our typical customer isn’t at all typical. Our customers come from a very wide range, male and female, straight and homosexual, 20-60 years of age, blue collar and white collar. There isn’t a strong demographic one way or the other as far as people go. As for a regional demographic, some areas are stronger than others. However, I do find it interesting that Missouri, John Ashcroft’s home state, is very big into BDSM.

YNOT: That’s too funny… perhaps he’s into nipple clamps and rubber body suits.

Dennis: I always find it surprising that people think BDSM, or more specifically, D/s (Dom/submissive), is something bizarre, dark and kinky. If you look at almost any relationship, especially serious ones, one is always dominant in the relationship and one is submissive. This is certainly true for religion, God is dominant and we are submissive. It’s also true for the animal kingdom.

Some of our hottest selling items are our impact toys like whips, crops and floggers. I guess there are a lot of people out there that need some discipline, or at least a bunch that want to have the right stuff when it comes time to give someone else a spanking.

YNOT: How do you run your business? Where do you keep and distribute your product?

Dennis: We operate our business out of rented multi-unit commercial space. We stock and distribute all our products from this location. When we were seeking commercial space, we were honest in telling our potential landlords about our line of business. But for the protection of him and for us, we don’t publicize our actual office location. We don’t share what we do with the other tenants. Because we don’t operate a retail outlet or even allow customers to come and view our goods by private appointment, this works well for us. We just keep it on the down-low.

YNOT: How can Webmasters benefit by working with you and what puts you ahead of your competitors? We know you have tons of great stuff for the consumer, but please let all the Webmasters who deal in fetish and BDSM know how they can make money with you guys!

Dennis: Well, first, if they are Webmasters for BDSM or fetish oriented sites, they can benefit through offering related products to their visitors. Because their customers have already, just by visiting the sites, pre-qualified themselves as interested in our types of products, a BDSM or fetish Webmaster will see a much better conversion ratio, meaning that they will more than likely make a sale. Right now, to the general Webmaster we only offer a banner link affiliate program or non-branded solution. However, if the site has a high traffic volume and is a premier site in the BDSM and fetish market, we are willing to create a branded store for them. We currently do just such a thing with Bondage.com and Dominationguide.com. This allows them to have a branded store and we do all the work from design to order shipment. We get quite a few requests for this that unfortunately we can’t accommodate, and we are happy to do it when the site fits the mold. For those that we do accept, this is an excellent revenue source.

YNOT: Any precautions you take to stay on the down low… business and/or personal?

Dennis: As for precautions, we aren’t even close to doing anything illegal, but I worry about overzealous, misguided persecution all the time. You see it a lot in our industry. You see a lot of people getting their 15 minutes of fame at the expense of others. There is nothing more concerning to me than our employees and their prosperity, so I do my best to make sure each employee understands the heat publicity could bring and what the worst case could be for them. As a benefit, we also have retained a lawyer whose sole purpose is to provide our employees with advice as it relates to being an employee in our type of business. It’s a small thing, but it allows our employees to feel confident that what they are doing and what we are doing is not anything illegal.

As for precautions in my personal life, I don’t openly publicize our business really, just family and some friends know what we do. I’m sure most in the industry will agree it’s not really hard to talk around the subject and avoid the specifics.

YNOT: Do you have any special legal precautions you take given the nature of your business?

Dennis: No, nothing out of the ordinary. Like all adult products, ours are sold as novelty, so that provides adequate liability protection. All of our orders are sent in discreet packaging to protect our customers’ right to privacy. Now if we wanted to have a physical storefront, we would have a whole host of issues. Actually we would probably have to move first just to accomplish that task.

YNOT: How has your personal involvement been in the industry?

Dennis: I’ve enjoyed my involvement within the industry. We have received some great help and insight from various people; some from here at YNOT. What I really have enjoyed is the eclectic mix of people. We have had a few chances to get out to shows and meet people such as yourself at Internext and we have had a really enjoyable time.

YNOT: Yeah! In fact I think it’s been almost two years now since we met.

Dennis: My wife considers me as a social butterfly, but I just enjoy talking to people and getting to know them. I guess it helps that I accept that people are different and they may not share my views and opinions. It’s not one of my life responsibilities to make them confirm with my ideas and values.

YNOT: I’ve seen you pretty active on the YNOT Masters chat boards. What are some of the current hot issues you are paying the most attention to?

Dennis: As with most Webmasters, I’m concerned about the patent issues. I hate that some are targeting our industry because they believe that we are loaded with profits and thus cash, but not enough to fight them. Most are just getting by, and for many, this is just extra income and a second job, a very hard second job. I think the belief that the adult Internet is wildly profitable and that it’s easy money are two of the biggest myths only understood by those that are veterans of the industry. I think that down the road, several years from now, many of those people or companies selectively targeting our industry are going to be sorry they wasted their resources on it. You got a lot of adult Webmasters making a few dollars here and there.

We have some other huge issues that are directly affecting the adult Webmasters’ revenue stream right now. You have the Visa / Mastercard situation, the third party billing industries problem, etc. Adult Webmasters are dealing with a lot of issues affecting revenues on many fronts. This whole Acacia / patents thing wouldn’t be such a big issue in our industry if the myth regarding wild profits was true, but it simply just isn’t. If it was and even though a lot of adult Webmasters would have a problem with it from a principles aspect, most would just pay the fee and be done with it, considering all the other issues. Right now, the average adult Webmaster is backed into a corner, so they have very little choice but to stand firm and fight or at least not go easily. Acacia’s people might be very good at the patent infringement revenue stream model, but they committed a serious error when it came to analyzing the target and timing. If I were someone like Acacia, I’d have targeted the sports related websites. Most are using streaming video/audio and are owned by companies that would pay the licensing fee out of petty cash.

YNOT: That’s a very interesting observation. First suggestion I’ve heard on that actually.

Dennis: My second real concern is all the negative publicity and the lack of acknowledgement by the mainstream of the adult Internet sector’s positive contributions to society in general. [Editor’s Note: This interview took place before the favorable “60 Minutes” segment on the adult industry aired on national American television.] Unfortunately, we are such a fragmented industry that we can not collectively change this right now. Case in point, nobody outside our industry acknowledges that the adult industry is by far the leader in funding the anti-child pornography movement. When they do, they say it’s because child pornography is bad for the industry. Well duh! Unsafe cars are bad for the auto industry too! Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a popular association or organization that can help effectively shape the publicity for us. Many people have tried to create this type of organization, but as of yet, no one has succeeded at it. But I believe at some point someone will be successful in creating an organization that will unite and represent as a whole our industry and we will then see some positive benefits that will make membership in such an organization a generally accepted thing for adult Webmasters. I would love to be involved in something like this and I believe it can be done with the right approach.

YNOT: Any funny stories or events in your line of work you can share with us?

Dennis: I have a couple of funny stories actually.

We once had a lady place an order for one each of our three sizes of butt plugs, small, medium and large. She obviously didn’t pay much attention to the actual sizes because a couple days after we shipped the order, we got an e-mail from her requesting permission to return the large one. She said that the large was so large you could only use it on an elephant. Ever since then, I cannot look at a large butt plug without imagining a leather clad dominant zookeeper trying to stick one in the ass of a wide-eyed elephant.

YNOT: UGH!

Dennis: A second one is only somewhat funny. We had a customer purchase a male chastity device. Most of these only come with one key. The one they purchased was the type that once locked on, it is almost impossible to remove with unlocking it. To make a long story short, the gentleman who the device was for, contacted us about a month later needing a replacement key. It turned out that his wife had locked him up and then ran off with another guy and the one key. So, we get him another key and send it to him via overnight delivery. The next day, I get an email that the key won’t fit in the keyhole. After a couple of e-mails, I have a phone conversation with the gentleman regarding the problem. Turns out in the end that not only did she run off with the key, but before she ran off, she also filled the keyhole with super glue. The key was useless and he had to find a way to have it cut off.

YNOT: What would you be doing if you weren’t running a BDSM store?

Dennis: Hmmm, tough question, I’m not really sure. My background is focused in finance and corporate crisis management. Until I worked for the company that owns the BDSM Store, I never worked for a company that was financially stable. Previously, I spent a lot of time getting paid to make them stable, but I got sick of it and stressed out from cleaning up the messes and delivering unpleasant news to the employees of the companies I was trying to save. So I guess it would probably be doing something in corporate management for a stable company, if there really ever is such a thing.

YNOT: Are there any new features or launches coming up with BDSM Store that we can look forward to?

Dennis: We have some minor site design changes we are working on. We also have some back-end changes we are working on that will help promotional efforts. In addition, we would also like to find someone willing to contribute a weekly column on the BDSM topic and would be willing to offer them some promotion through the site in exchange, but so far, we have yet to find someone interested. I would love to hear from anyone interested. They can contact me via e-mail at dennis@bdsmstore.com. A lot of our collective resources lately have been devoted to our SexToyReports.com website, which we recently launched. However, even through the holiday season, we will be continuing to add products to our already huge selection at The BDSM Store.

Do you know a Webmaster or company with a great story to tell? Someone innovative, unique or perhaps even entertaining? Tell us about this them for future consideration to be “In The Spotlight” here at YNOTNews!