The Studio is a high-end fetish shop that carries a huge variety of products, including the Paradise Electro Stimulation (P.E.S.) kits, leather, latex, whips, restraints, masks and blindfolds, inflatables and insertables, vibrators, jewelry, hosiery, and of course, plenty of DVDs and magazines. Walking into The Studio is not as an intimidating experience, as some might imagine. You are greeted in the lobby by Anna Fay, the store’s head manager and expert in all things fetish and kinky. She is there Monday through Friday to answer any question you might have about any one of the items in their enormous selection of sexual gear and fashion. Along with her helpful knowledge, she has the personality to make you feel comfortable and at ease as you shop.
SLV: Tell me a little about the history of The Studio.
ANNA: It started off in 1986 as a mail order only, when the owners lived in the Bay Area. It started to grow and they moved to Vegas in 1991. With lots of people coming through Vegas, the founder of P.E.S. products thought that this area would be good for research. They were originally working out of their house, making products in their garage. They had a PO Box on Rainbow and people ended up going there thinking it was a store. The owners had traveled and seen stores in Europe and they had a concept for a “Tiffany’s” kind of Boutique, something high-end and classy with unique displays and interesting appeal. That’s how the store started—as a means to showcase the P.E.S. products. The store used to be about half the size it is now, with a little latex and a few restraints. The lobby exists so we can greet people, and we also like to make them feel they’re coming into something more private. The lobby makes the transition from the outside to the inside. Because of our name, sometimes people think we’re a photo studio. Once there was an entire family that showed up to get their portraits taken. Sometimes we’ve had people think it’s a music studio and ask about doing their recording demos.
SLV: What does P.E.S. stand for?
ANNA: Paradise Electro Stimulations.
SLV: There is a patent on this?
ANNA: They have many patents. I think there are sixteen. Different electrodes are patented differently. There was nothing on the market, in terms of accessories, that was attractive and safe at the same time that these were developed. There are a lot out there, but very few people are working with conductive silicone, and that’s what our patents are in. Silicone is not cheap. To buy a silicone dildo is at least 40-50 bucks, and that’s a basic. They get more and more expensive all the time because silicone is going up in price. Conductive silicone makes it even more expensive.
SLV: What’s conductive silicone?
ANNA: It’s silicone that has been impregnated with conductive particles, like carbon or silver or various alloys, so when you deliver electricity to it, it delivers electricity to the body. There are only a few companies that handle conductive silicone. There are more companies that handle medical grade silicone for the manufacturing of dildos and vibrators and medical equipment. The conductive portion of it is a lot more specialized. The conductive silicone has been a real revolution in the electro stimulation. It delivers a smoother sensation, and they filter out a lot of the negative harshness and they’re flexible. You can make cock rings that actually fit a penis, no matter how oddly shaped a guy may be. You have anal plugs that can be bent so you can do prostrate stimulation. Those are some of the bonuses to it.
SLV: What percentage of your company’s income comes from the P.E.S. products?
ANNA: P.E.S. is our primary business. The store was started as frosting. When I first started working here, the bulk of the people that came in were tourists who saw our ads in international magazines. I’m very open to talking to people about any of the products, for me it’s a 50/50 split in my sales. But our primary business is the electrical stimulation. That’s what it’s always been, and it probably always will be, because that’s our specialty!
SLV: Is there one of the P.E.S. products that would bring a 40 year-old nonorgasmic woman to orgasm?
ANNA: We always tell people that your biggest sex organ is your brain. We have a unique sales approach in general. The goal isn’t to see how much you can sell, the goal is to make sure the customers are happy with what they buy. The goal is to minimize returns. We don’t have the “Yeah, buy that. I don’t care whether you like it or not.” That’s not us at all—totally not a standard adult store. With the electro stimulation, we get a lot of questions from people with sexual dysfunction. The first thing I’ll ask is about the medical reasons why there might be a problem. The next step is “Have you talked to your doctor about these medical reasons?” For example, people who are on antidepressants, or diabetic men, or for women, there are hormones. If you’re older and going through menopause, your testosterone levels are dropping, so you’re probably not as easily aroused as you used to be. Or, it could be you’ve always had a problem and have a hang-up, mentally. I think that’s the first thing to deal with. “What’s holding you back from having orgasms?” After you figure that out, start out with a vibrator. Electro stimulation is fun and is really good, but if you’ve never used a vibrator or masturbated, jumping into electro stimulation can be a little extreme. If you don’t know what your body is going to respond to, it’s jumping into something that’s completely alien. I tell them to start off slow. We have men come in shopping for their wives. They’ll be saying ‘I want this and that.’ I ask them, “Have you talked to your wife about what you’re looking at?” First off, you never spend $500 or $600 without talking to your wife first.
SLV: Why electro stimulation?
ANNA: Electro stimulation can enhance your response. If you find it really erotic, it can induce orgasm for you. When you first start using it, it feels really different. It’s such a strange sensation that you’re like ‘What is this?’ You have to process that. Men, sometimes with practice, find themselves having dry orgasms where they feel like they’ve ejaculated, but they haven’t. It can also make a regular orgasm much more intense. One of the goals a lot of men have with the product is a ‘hands-free orgasm’ where just by placement of the electrodes on the body and how you tune the power box, without touching themselves, they get off. It takes a lot of practice. It is not an instantaneous event. The first time you use it, do what you do to feel aroused: watch porn, have your partner in the room with you, touch yourself, do whatever you have to do and then your brain starts to associate it with sex, versus ‘What’s that weird tingling sensation?’ When you get past those initial stages where ‘This feels really good,’ to ‘Oh, I can tune the box this way with this combination of products and I squirt with no effort.’ Men are more obsessed with that than women are. My favorite customers are the ones that walk in and say ‘We’ve been married for twenty years and we want to get something to spice things up a little in the bedroom’ or “Her sex drive is way up here and mine is way down here and I want to satisfy her and make her happy.’ The cool thing is that when couples do it, you can hand your partner the box and they can run the box for you, and help influence your orgasm. That’s one of my favorite things about the product. It definitely can help people’s relationships.
SLV: Who are you trying to attract to the store?
ANNA: My goal currently has been women. I think women in general need to become more comfortable with their sexuality; to realize that sex doesn’t have to be serious. Sex is fun and enjoyable and we should embrace it the same way men do. Our users tend to range in age from the 20’s to 70’s. Fetishes have become more popular at a younger age than they did in the past. In 2000, when I first started working here, most of the customers were in their 40’s and 50’s. As you age, you become more comfortable with your sexuality. Young people as a rule are not comfortable with it. I think that now they’re becoming more comfortable at a younger age. Now I have a lot of customers in their 20’s and 30’s, and we still have our older customers. Our ads used to be very sexy and “Where your fantasies come true” and we’d get men and women coming in thinking we were hookers, or pro-domes (a professional dominatrix). So I said, “Okay, we need something blunt,” and that’s where “Where the kinky buy their toys” came into play. It spells it out. Nothing else going on! You’d be surprised at how many people still come in expecting more that that.
SLV: Do any questions ever embarrass you?
ANNA: No, hardly ever. Most of the time I go into professional mode and explain stuff and you’re not going to get me to blush. This one time, a couple came in and were looking at cock rings. I asked him what size he needed. His wife picks up the display and opens her mouth and I realized she was sizing him by how much her mouth was open when she gave him head. She said yes, that was the case, and I turned red. When I first started working here I was little miss innocent. Then they had a large case filled with huge molded latex dildos, 12, 13, 14 inch cocks that were in varying diameters. Hanging above it was this neon light—we used to call it the dildo tree, with inflatable penises hanging from it. Nothing else shocked me, but this glowing dildo tree did. When I started working in the store, I used to stare at the dildo tree all the time, thinking I can’t believe anybody uses those things. A common question from men is “How can I look bigger?” I tell them to lose weight. That pad of fat at the base of the shaft makes you look smaller. If you’re 5-6 inches, you’re fine. You don’t need to be 8-9 inches. For most women, you’d bottom out at 9 inches. I don’t want to be in pain for a week after I have sex.
SLV: How do you stand behind your products?
ANNA: There is no guarantee with most of the products in the store. But if you bought something and took it home and the zipper just won’t stay up, a vendor might fix it. Latex is a little harder to deal with because latex is a very fragile material, and anybody can rip latex, if you don’t use enough lube. Most of the stuff I never see again. We examine everything before it leaves the store. Sometimes when the power boxes get old from years of use, they’ll need a new one, or people don’t read the instructions and use the wrong lube on conductive silicone.
SLV: Have you been to other fetish stores to compare products for sale?
ANNA: I’ve been to L.A. and San Francisco which both have a lot of fetish stores. We have as much high-end products as those stores. We try to cater to the things that nobody else carries. We carry more high-end leather, and we are the Latex store in Vegas. You can get the cheapie stuff at the adult stores, but if you want quality latex, we’re the store. We order a lot from Europe. We also make a lot of items that people seem intrigued by, like the acrylic paddles and we’re checking into making aluminum paddles because they are very rare and not easy to find on the market. We try to fill that niche where they want the hot, sexy stuff.
SLV: What was one of your bigger sale days? Do people with a lot of money come in and just splurge?
ANNA: It happens a lot actually. I had a couple come in around Christmas one time and they came in multiple days looking at stuff and they brought all their friends back home sex toys for Christmas. I think they spent $10,000 in one week. A one or two thousand dollar sale is an easy sale. I’ve had people come in and spend 3-4 thousand on latex. It’s usually repeat customers that drop a lot of money. We have some customers that ask if we could find something for them and I can find just about anything.
SLV: So, you’re the lady to come see about kinky.
ANNA: We give you a one-on-one experience. We are very, very customer service oriented and knowledgeable. It’s a good environment for couples and for women. Despite the fact that it’s a fetish store and it may sound scary, we’re not scary. I’m here five days a week and I’m just a girl from the Midwest working in Vegas. It’s pretty hilarious. I’m an Iowa girl who ended up in Vegas working in an adult store. My mother was traumatized by it at first, but she got to the point where she could joke about it. It was easier to tell my father. I had a couple come in here from the Midwest and she was mad at him for bringing her in. By the time they left, she was laughing, giggling, and she was thrilled. That’s the kind of experience I love that people have here. I’m not intimidating, and you can ask me anything and I will answer it. If you have a question about a product and you don’t know what the heck it does, I’ll tell you. SLV
The Studio Fetish Boutique is open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm and Sat. 12-6pm (702-214-2851) www.thefetishboutique.com • www.peselectro.com
Issue 40 featuring: AJ Bailey, Karlie Montana, Charlie Laine and Melissa Jacobs |
