Sex toy parties are pretty common things now a days. A group of (usually) women gather together to giggle and fondle sex toys in the comfort of a friend’s home while a sales person discusses their wares. These are much like candle parties and Tupperware parties, but are usually a lot more fun. There are several companies that do this and they’re mostly pretty similar. The products they sell are usually the same types and qualities and they promise their sales people houses, cars, and big money. Whether they actually deliver those things is unknown.
There’s one company that stood out in the crowd, but that company has closed its doors after just 13 months. It’s a sad day for the sex positive crowd that saw a shining beacon in Ducky Doolittle and Metis Black’s at home sex toy party company, Love U Parties.
What made Love U different was it’s emphasis on education; high quality, innovative products; and upfront honesty with it’s sales staff. Love U was founded by Ducky who is a former sex worker turned sex educator and Metis who is the founder of Tantus which makes some of the highest quality sex toys in the world. Because of the connection to Tantus there were obviously a lot of their own products available through Love U, but there were also dozens of other products that were also very well made. Their line always impressed me.
While most sex toy party companies catered to vanilla, heterosexual cis-women, Love U broadened its horizons by reaching out to groups including men, LGBT folks, and kinky people. Sales people were treated to regular trainings that not only included the sex toys themselves, but also ways to educate their party goers on all topics about sex and sexuality that reached all genders, orientations, and levels of kink.
Love U didn’t promise its sales staff cars or houses. Instead it featured graphs and charts on what was possible and how you could get ahead. They were upfront with the percentages paid out to sales staff and about charges they would incur. There were never any surprises, until they closed down. But that was also handled in an honest and straight-forward way.
Unfortunately, Love U just didn’t make enough money. There are now many sex educators left floundering before the holidays with little to no source of income. Love U was one of the few ways that this group could work in an environment they enjoyed and still continue to make a living wage. Sex education tends to not be an extremely lucrative career choice. I had planned on joining the Love U force myself and am very disappointed since they were the only party company I would have wanted to work for.
The good news is that many have reported that Love U did have a positive impact on the way the party businesses run. More of them started to focus on sex toy materials and education. Let’s hope that they continue to get better even with Love U gone.
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