Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Tomchesson.
Sarah, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started selling sex toys in 2007. I had just deferred acceptance to a graduate program in Social Work to focus on a small clothing line I had founded with a friend. I was excited to see where it would go and was also involved in community event organizing in LA that I was invested in.
I was part of the volunteer group that founded Dyke Day LA (www.facebook.com/DykeDayLA) in 2007 and was producing Shotgun, a weekly queer night at the Eagle LA. Another member of the Dyke Day organizing committee, Kristen Tribby, was running the education program at a feminist sex toy store, Babeland, and she convinced me that selling sex toys would be a great day job. I joined the team and soon discovered that teaching sex ed was my passion, and I was good at it!
When the opportunity came up in 2009 to move over to the Pleasure Chest with Kristen, I was reluctant. Pleasure Chest did not have a developed education program or the reputation in my circles of being a sex-positive retailer. However, I was inspired by the owner, Brian Robinson’s, vision to grow Pleasure Chest into the industry leader it had been at its founding and soon realized the parallels between my experience, the company’s goals and the passionate team I was joining.
I started as the General Manager of the West Hollywood Pleasure Chest in 2009. By the end of 2010, I took on a national co-director position and oversaw a staffing restructure, implementation of training and education standards for all staff, the opening of 2 new stores, as well as a number of operational and technological upgrades in all locations. In 2015, I was promoted to Head of Business Operations.
Now, I oversee the operations of the five Pleasure Chest locations nationwide, our online store PleasureChest.com, and I direct our national brand and marketing strategy. I’ve continued to teach as part of the PleasurEd program; teaching and developing pleasure-based, consent-centered sex ed is still at the heart of the work I get to do at the Pleasure Chest.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Running a small business is littered with challenges! For me, being a female leader in the sex industry, coming into a leadership position with a vision of changing the company culture in my 20s, and being promoted into the key leadership position in my organization while I was pregnant with my daughter were all incredible growth opportunities that challenged me not only professionally but also personally.
In the last ten years, the business challenges have been significant; growing a brick and mortar retail business is complicated in the digital age, as is staying competitive with online pricing continuing to drop, and the “Amazon-ification” of shopping. Balancing the mission-based community initiatives with the bottom line of sustaining the business can create competing priorities at times.
It’s in the challenges that I’ve learned the most about leadership – the importance of getting input and buy-in from your team. Several mistakes we’ve made can be traced back to not having a fully informed perspective on an issue. With that in mind, I’ve navigated business hurdles better by incorporating input from the team before making decisions so that all angles of a business problem can be considered.
Pleasure Chest – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
With five locations in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago and an online shop, Pleasure Chest is the oldest sex-positive retailer in the country. Pleasure Chest was started in 1971 in the West Village and challenged convention from day one by refusing to block out the store windows with XXX, which was standard at the time for any store with adult material. Founders Duane Colglazier and Bill Rifkin wanted to create a department store feel. In an interview in 1972, Bill said: “We treat our customers just as though they were walking into Gimbel’s to buy a table and chairs.” This simple principle continues to guide how we run our stores today, now under the ownership of Brian, Duane’s nephew.
I like to think that a Pleasure Chest experience is disarming and relaxed, a balance that we work hard to craft. You may encounter a life-sized, black silicone fist in view of introductory plugs barely the size of a finger – the fist suggestively placed as if to say “you may someday be coming back for me.” Our product selection nudges some customers out of their comfort zone, but we are also intentional about creating a comfortable experience for people who are new to sex toy shopping. We do not overlook that sex can be silly and playful. The stores are designed to put people at ease with beautiful displays, warm lighting, wide aisles, plentiful testers and an energized and knowledgeable staff that welcomes you in and aims to meet you where you are on your sexual journey.
I am incredibly proud to be part of Pleasure Chest’s legendary history and the company’s bold embrace of sexuality, particularly alternative sexualities. One of my favorite Pleasure Chest stories is featured in the recent Joan Jett documentary, BAD REPUTATION. She tells the story of buying the ringed, leather belt that she gave to Sid Vicious from the Pleasure Chest’s Los Angeles store. The belt can be seen in many photos of them from the 70s.
Pleasure Chest even inspired Queen, who included us in their 1978 song “Let Me Entertain You”:
-If you wanna see some action.
-We get nothing but the best.
-The S & M attraction.
-We got the Pleasure Chest.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
There is not a particular moment for me that I am most proud of in my time with the Pleasure Chest. The things that bring me pride have taken time to build and are now engrained in company culture and will outlive my tenure, I hope! I am proud that we’ve been able to grow as a business while remaining focused on our mission to support our community’s sexual growth and exploration with an emphasis on education.
The amazing thing about our education program is that we not only provide free education every week in our locations nationwide, we also staff our classes primarily with in-house educators. In my time with the company, we have trained 70+ Pleasure Chest educators who started out in entry-level sales positions. In the early years, Kristen and I were co-teaching with every new educator, traveling and teaching in the stores in NY and Chicago, and observing all of the classes for educator development.
Now, store managers run the programs and peer educators co-teach and participate in the development of new educators. Similarly, when I first joined the company, there were no mechanisms for growing leadership internally. Now, the majority of our local and national leadership have been promoted from within, which has diversified our leadership, created meaningful growth opportunities within the company and helps to preserve the unique culture we have worked to build.
Finding ways to better engage and develop our staff was my vision when I first started at the Pleasure Chest. To see systems solidly in place that are now fairly self-sustaining is the realization of that vision and I am really proud of that.
Contact Info:
- Address: 7733 Santa Monica Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90046
- Website: www.pleasurechest.com
- Phone: 3236501022
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/ pleasurecheststores/ - Facebook: https://www.
facebook.com/tpcla/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/
PleasureChestLA - Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/
biz/the-pleasure-chest-west- hollywood
Image Credit:
Perry Gallagher, Joan Jett – Brad Elterman
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