Caz and Rachel got sent to the pool. That was probably a mistake.
We took E-Stim Systems back to the ANME show in Burbank, and the show itself went brilliantly. Getting there was the problem. Two crates, shipped a week early, got stuck in customs at LAX and never made it to the show floor. So our entire stand arrived in Los Angeles in two black hand luggage bags and an iPad. It worked.
Listen: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or press play above.
About this episode
Recorded in a Burbank hotel room at the end of ANME, with the stand packed up, the girls at the pool and nobody left to keep the pair of us in check. I am joined by Ian from Joanne's E-Stim Emporium, stockist, reviewer, maker, designated driver of the world's largest Jeep, and the man the industry knows as Stuntcock.
The spine of it is the customs saga. Three sets of power of attorney, a form rejected because managing director is apparently not a real job title, a request for a social security number from a British company, and an FDA requirement that did not apply. Then what you actually do about it, which is plan B in a carry-on and 22 years of workshop footage running as a slideshow on an iPad.
Around that: why buyers cared more about in-house manufacturing than anything else on the stand, Ian's route from 23 years in the army to reviewing sex toys, the move to Shopify and doing it the hard way, a masturbation coach, a machine that drove itself across the ballroom, Caz and the lift buttons, and a photo Ian really should not have sent his mum.
The systems failed. The people did not.
In this episode
- Two crates, one airport, and a stand that never arrived
- Why a managing director is not a real job title
- Plan B: an entire trade stand in hand luggage
- Frankie the Tanky, and the car park with the low roof
- Moving to Shopify, and saying yes before you know how
- The ballroom, the awards, and the disco dildos next door
- The photo Ian sent his mum
- Independent stores, artisan creators, and why small still works
- From the army to Stuntcock
- Why making it in-house is the thing buyers actually care about
- Who does this appeal to? Not everyone, and that is the point
Full transcript
No Adult Supervision In Burbank
Ian: Come by yar my love.
Wayne: Come by yar. It's really going to be one of those. It's going to be one of those, yep. So hello everyone, it's Wayne here from I Make Sex Toys, and we've decided to name this as No Adult Supervision because we don't have any adult supervision. Caz and Rachel have been sent off to the pool, and we're going to have a little chat about them. The pool, you say? We have a pool in the studio? No, we are currently still in. I was about to say Las Vegas, but actually we're in Burbank, having just done the ANME show, and it's it's been an eventful show. Well, the show actually wasn't that eventful. Getting here was rather eventful, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But yes, with me hiding from the sun outside, and it's about 400 degrees. It's the surface of the sun out there. It's the surface of the sun out there, is Ian also known as stuntcock. Yep. Well-earned reputation. Well-earned reputation. Where did stuntcock come from?
Ian: Uh well, Joanne, when she started reviewing sex toys, um, when she got male sex toys, she needed a stuntcock. So it stuck.
Wayne: So you just appeared and went to the show.
Ian: I just appeared and went down the stuntcock.
Wayne: Yep. Basically, we're here to do the ANME show. Well, we were here to do the Amy show because we're actually recording this now after the ANME show. We've uh literally had two and a half days of show. We're all knackered and shattered, and the stand's packed up, and we are sitting around because the plane back is tomorrow where we're going somewhere else.
Ian: And uh yeah, so we've done the sight seeing a bit this afternoon.
Wayne: Yeah, we've done a bit of sight seeing. So we we we've got been down the Hollywood Walk of Fame and seen the Hollywood sign from about 400 miles away because it's all very touristy.
DHeLL
Wayne: Biggest issue we've had, we turned up, but the stand didn't. Well, the space for the stand was here. The crates for the stand are still stuck in in Los Angeles airport. We sent them out over a week ago. We tried to do something called a temporary export or temporary import, but due to various issues, mainly due to DHL, and I am gonna name them because they are have turned out to be a bunch of so-and-so's. I'm gonna try and keep this clean, adult, but not explicit, as the tagline says. We've been asked for three sets of power attorney. We actually got an email from DHL that said, this is what you need to do to do temporary import. Power of attorney, one already on file. And a few other bits and pieces. So we thought, okay, fine, we'll do other the other bits and pieces. Then a day later, "you haven't sent us a power of attorney!" Uh, you told us we had a power of attorney. Okay, fine, we'll do a second one. Filled it in, sent it in. And the problem is because we're dealing with DHL, everything tends to take a day. So you send it in and you get a response the next day. It's not an instantaneous response. Oh, that power attorney got rejected. Why? Again, a bit of a delay. But it got rejected because managing director is not a term that the Americans understand. Okay, fine, let's Google it. Oh, CEO, right, fine, that got accepted. Power attorney. Oh, no, no, no, not accepted. Why this time? The dates wrong. We're a UK company going into the US, therefore we have to put US dates. Okay, finish, fix that one. You don't have a social security number. No, because we're a UK company and we're importing into the US. And this went on and on on. Oh, you need FDA approval. Here we go. No, we don't. The products are class class 85, not 90. We have been doing this for a while. We know how the custom system works, but it seems DHL don't know how their own systems work. So we ended up on Friday, I think, actually no, Thursday, we had some inkling that things weren't gonna go the way they should do. So
Plan B Booth In Hand Luggage
Wayne: we came up with plan B, which was take as much stuff as we could in hand luggage and hope for the best. Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. And guess what? It worked. We took as much stuff as we could in hand luggage, marked as personal items, because one of the problems is we can't normally take stuff as hand luggage because they spot it and then go, you're importing. And it's like, no, this is our personal kit. Yeah. And the fact that we all use the kit helps, although I will point out that the kit we brought with us hadn't been used yet. So it was all nice and clean for people to handle. Yet. So that was interesting. So we turned up Saturday,, got to the US on Saturday, turned up to the stand on Sunday with two little black bags. I've probably got a black bag floating around here. But yeah, two little black bags of all of the stand. And uh strangely enough, here we are. Here's one of them. So our entire stand is in these two bags. It worked. We did have a second bit, which was an iPad, which we loaded up with all of the shots that I have off my phone of the engineering working and bits and pieces from other shows, and stuck that on an iPad and put it onto a slideshow, which worked very well. And yeah, it worked worked very well. Whenever you run a business, you always need to go what's plan A, what's plan B, and even what's plan C. Because at some point in time, things are gonna go wrong. And for us, yeah, turning up to a show five and a half thousand miles away from our home base with no kit to show is a bit of an emergency, but we managed to get
Driving Hollywood In Frankie The Tanky
Wayne: through it. Anyway, Ian, why did you come?
Ian: Uh well, it's one of those things when someone rings you up and says, Um, do you fancy coming to Los Angeles? In fact, to Burbank, Hollywood, all expenses paid to talk about E-Stim, you'd be a bit mad to say no, wouldn't you?
Wayne: So I said yes. And you said yes. You didn't you didn't just do it once, you've done it twice.
Ian: I know.
Wayne: I'm a sucker for punishment. Uh well, there are actually a few other extra bits there. One is I just look at driving in America and go, oh no. So I give the keys to to Ian.
Ian: Yeah, who's stupid enough to drive in America.
Wayne: He's stupid enough to drive in America, and having just gone down Hollywood Boulevard in um what did we call it? Frankie the Tanky. Frankie the Tanky, which is a Jeep Wagoneer, which is the size of a London bus. Yeah. And going into the underground car park was entertaining.
Ian: Uh we had to breathe in.
Wayne: Yeah. When the sign says eight foot going down to seven foot, you're like, how tall is this vehicle? Yeah. Screw it.
Ian: Because we didn't know.
Wayne: Yeah, there's no sign on the inside of the vehicle saying this vehicle is overheight. But we did sort of work out most American vehicles are big. Yeah. And we got away with it. We got away with it. We survived. We got into the car park and we got out again.
Ian: Mysteriously.
Wayne: Yeah, except that due due to um the Americans Ian actually paid twice for parking.
Ian: Yeah, I'm a bit upset about that. He's not happy. Yeah, yeah.
Wayne: We stuck the machine, this card in the machine, and then then it spat it out and then did it again.
Ian: Well, no, I spoke to the customer support and he said, put your card in again. No, it's not been charged, we're gonna have to do it again. Okay, not a problem. Gets back, they've done it twice.
Wayne: Thank you very much. Tourist. And it was some stupid amount as well. It's like $3.50 a second. But it but it is it's probably it's not that expensive, but it it's Hollywood. Yeah. And yeah, we found the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the stars. By the way, there's 2,700 and something stars, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame is about two and a half miles long. So if you are planning to go and look, it's a long way. Do it at night when it's cooler. Do it at night when it's cooler, but then you won't be able to see the stars.
Ian: Well, yeah.
Wayne: They'll probably be full of people trying to. There was at least three people with blank stars trying to sell you the opportunity to have your own name on the star. Little letters that they stick on the door. Yeah, totally legit that one. I did find the the great American current president, which did look like someone had shot it because there was a bit of concrete mistake.
Ian: I think it's been repaired a couple of times, that's it.
Wayne: Yeah, there's been a few bits of repair. Strange politics, we try and avoid politics, and I'm not really going to talk about politics on here, but I think that there does. It did come up a couple of times. Americans themselves, we love Americans. Yeah, they are so upfront, so friendly, they're fantastic to work with, they're fantastic to talk to. American politics is one of those things that that people outside shouldn't comment on, Brits shouldn't comment on, because let's face it, our politics is nearly as bad. But the American people, we love you. You are so welcoming, and thank you for having us because it has been genuinely fun. Met some amazing people, met some amazing people, including Kinky, who is our waitress in the restaurant. She probably won't listen to this, but she's lovely. So when you walk into a restaurant thinking you've spent a day talking about making sex toys, and the person who takes you to the table goes, Hello, yes, my name is Kinky. You're like, Really? But yeah, she was nice. Really nice. The chicken pot pie. Oh American food is interesting. The one thing as a Brit you really don't understand is portion size. Yeah. Because American portions are massive, and I mean ginormous. Yeah. The we have the infamous chicken pot pie, which this particular hotel is well known for, was at least eight inches in diameter. Chicken pot dinner plate. Yeah, it was a size of a dinner plate. So I think I'm gonna go for it again tonight, but I'm actually gonna have the kids' version, which is only the size of a half a dinner plate. But yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy. Really nice though. Very, very nice. Very nice. And it's strange because I'm I eat lots of junk food. Yeah. But the fact that I'm going to a restaurant and I'm craving carrots and vegetables and cooked chicken is quite bizarre for me. But yeah, from a waitress called Kinky. From a waitress called Kinky.
Shopify Lessons And Saying Yes
Wayne: Um because the one you know, one thing that's missing this year, this time last year, we were beginning to look at tariffs because tariffs were kicking in. Oh yes. We were looking at our website because the problem is our old website, which was very, very old. And yes, anyone out there who wants to complain about the E-Stim Systems website prior to September last year, yeah, it was old and crap. But we decided with a lot of help from Ian to move over to a platform called Shopify. It was a kick, I believe. It was a kick. A big kick. It was a big kick. Um, because you when did you do it?
Ian: Uh we did it about eight months before you.
Wayne: Um eight months' experience. Yeah. So it was a I'll ask Ian everything. I'll pick his brain and go, how did you do this? Which which bit did you add there? Yeah. See, I could have actually asked Andy from ElectraStim, hello Andy from Electrastim, who I know listens to this podcast, or at least one of his staff does. So, hello Andy from ElectraStim. Um, why were you not at ANME? You were missed. Yeah. It was great. Yeah. Only E-Stim company in the world sitting at ANME talking to people about E-Stim. Yes. Do you think it'll be on the list for next year? Maybe. It was busy. It was busy, yeah. Um anyway, back to Andy from Electrastim. Yeah, they they've been using Shopify for a while. But for some obscure reason, I don't think I would have been able to phone Andy up and go, Andy, could you tell me how you did this on Shopify? Yeah. One, because I don't think he would have told me, and two, I don't actually think he did it anyway. I think he probably got an agency to do it.
Wayne: You went the hard way. Yeah, he went the hard way. You went the hard way. Oh, I went the hard way. Oh, yeah. Well, we like to be different. Well, you learned. Yeah, I mean, I think it was Richard Branson who Branson. Branson, when he I c I can't remember exactly what he says, but it's something along the lines of say yes and then learn how to do it. Yeah, that's it. Bear in mind he did that with an airline. Yeah, good advice. Didn't know how to launch an airline, so he just said yes and then worked it out afterwards. Which I think is, yeah, I I agree. That's a quite a good principle. Uh we do it all the time. We'll try it and then learn how to do it afterwards. But yeah, we we've sort of been working on Shopify and we actually quite like it now. And I think a lot of people now have have commented on the improvements. It's much better to use, it's much better to use for retailers, it's much better for us to use on the back end, yeah. Which also means that it's easier for you as a customer because we don't lose things as much. Uh no, we leave that for DHL. Yes. This is gonna turn out an advert for DHL. DHL. DHL, yes, the company that can ship anything you want if you're a Formula One team around the world. Yeah. I wonder how how much do we have to do that? We put wheels on your control box. I could put wheels on the control box. If we stick DHL over our control box, do you think they get give us a better service?
Ian: I think you might have gone with DH Hell.
Wayne: We could yeah, DH Hell. DH Hell, yeah. Yeah, I'm liking that. Yeah, we're gonna copyright that one. DH Hell. DH Hell. Do you think we should stick it over Frankie the tanky? Oh god, no. Why room in a good vehicle? Yeah, right. Ah, yes, vehicles. Ian, would you like to explain your new fetish? I I'm saying nothing. Ian has a new fetish that we discovered over here. Ian has a thing about the USPS trucks. They're they are they're they're little trucks, but they're like milk floats on.
Ian: They're slightly bigger than a wheelie bin.
Wayne: Yeah, they are and he really likes them. Every time he sees one, he's like, oh one. Yeah. And considering he's just bought himself a Winnebago. Yeah, uh Stimmy Bago. Stimmy bagel. Stimmy bago, yeah. Which probably weighs about eight tons and does three miles to the gallon. Absolutely. I think I think what he's doing, he's hankering to go back to a downsizing. He wants to downsize to a I don't think they drive in the.
Ian: I think those vans are so small, that's the reason why your kit is stuck at the airport. It won't actually fit in the van.
Wayne: Yeah, except we actually shipped it with DH Hell. DH Hell. Not USPS. Well, there we go. We do ship stuff for USPS, which generally does get there. I I mean, one of the problems with shipping anything around the world isn't the bit that we do, it's the bit that they do. You're relying on others. And you're relying on someone who's being paid three dollars a week. Yeah. And has to get a thousand packages out. I mean, I did speak to one courier who picked who dropped stuff off at our offices, and he was on something like drop number fourteen of 130.
Ian: Wow.
Wayne: I I feel sorry for them. Um but delivery drivers out there, we do appreciate what you're doing. Absolutely crucial. So yeah, we we managed to get here, we managed to get the stand running.
Inside The Show Floor And Awards
Wayne: It's it's quite an interesting venue because it it's a hotel with a sort of conferency bit stuck on the back. And the last two years we were stuck, we were in the back because they stuck us in a tent. Yeah. And we uh spent most of the show working out where the coolest part of the tent was because yeah, it's California, yeah, it's in July and it's hot. Yep. And this year we had a bonus because this year we got a ping from Lacey a few weeks ago to say, can we move you from the tent and put you in the main ballroom? And we went, uh, yes. Oh, go on. Please, go on then. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, we will if we have to. Yeah. Uh so we were in the main ballroom, which had aircon. And we discovered, we spoke to Lacey's this morning, and she brought she said, Yeah, the uh the aircon in the tent failed. Yes, it was.
Ian: Oh, I got it.
Wayne: Two days of no aircon. I would have been melted. It would be melting. Uh so yeah, we were in the ballroom, which was quite nice actually.
Ian: It was a nice location with lots of traffic.
Wayne: Lots of people wandering around. I mean, we had a POS company directly uh point of sale, so they were selling electronic tilly things. And then next door we had a silicon lady with bendy very short silicon lady with bendy fingers. Our fingers kept getting bent in various very, very strange. Very strange. And then the stand to the left of us was disco dildos. Oh, they were good. Oh, they were lit up and they won an award. Yep.
Ian: For the disco dildos. For the disco dildos.
Wayne: We were up for two awards, but unfortunately we didn't win any awards. But it was good to be nominated. Yeah, thank you very much for that for those of you who nominated us, and thank you very much for those of you who voted for us. Yeah, we went to the award ceremony, which was was very entertaining and actually quite informative. There was stuff it got a bit political, didn't it? Oh, yes, it got very political. But yeah, the the stuff about the founders and the interesting. When you're a business and you've been running for 22 years, you start to think maybe 22 years is quite a long time. And then you talk to someone who's been doing it for 50 years and was ex-Vietnam and started in the 60s, and you slightly, yeah, you've been doing it longer than me. Yeah. There are some long timers in the business who have been clearly doing it right because they've been doing it for so long. We had the guy walking around dressed as a cock. Yeah, and that look that's gonna be good on his CV. Yeah. So what did you do for the last six months? Um, I did costuming. What sort of costuming? Uh corporate costuming. Oh, do you tell us more? Uh um I walked around dressed as a cock. And they made me dance. And they made me dance. And then there was the cock, there were there was the the dildo machine. Yeah. Which was walked across the floor. Which yeah, it was remote control, but I don't think it was remote control the way it was it was. It looked out of control. It looked out of control because it was like um, what's it a symbian? Like a Symbian, yeah. Like a Symbian, but it was vibrating so much it was moving across the floor. Maybe it was trying to deliver some. What was your favourite stand? Uh yours. Apart from ours.
Ian: I know ours was gloriously I I like the disco dildo stand. Yeah. That that was quite fun.
Wayne: Did you see the stand of the ice cream dildos?
Ian: I did, yes. They looked a bit strange.
Wayne: For some reason, uh maybe it's just me, but I mean ESTIM is one of those nice things that we we create electrodes of different shapes, and and then we can power them with different waveforms and stick them through the box. So you get something different all the time. But dildos that let's face it, dildo's a dildo. Yeah. And what's the variations? Well, you can change the colour, you can change the shape, and then you can make them lay eggs. Yeah. Or turn them into animals.
Ian: Yeah.
Wayne: And it starts to get really bizarre. I mean, the disco one's quite entertaining. That was novel, yeah. But yeah, the the the unicorn tentacle. Yeah. The ice cream one. And the ice cream one, yeah. A bit vanilla for me. Is that where the ice creams came from? Could be. Yeah, there were some interesting freebies floating around. The girls had run off and found ice creams. They found ice creams. I didn't get one. Did you get one? Uh I did. Didn't you get one? I didn't get one of those. I think it is. Yeah. Kaz. The adult. The adult who's not in the room, thank God. Kaz has a thing about lift buttons, it seems.
Sending Porn to your Mother
Wayne: All of them. All of them. Clearly, the when she steps into a lift in in the Burbank Marriott. Her eyes light up. Her eyes light up. Like all the buttons. So, and yeah, a couple of times she did the childish thing of pressing all the buttons in the lift. And she did it at one point when some poor guy steps in it.
Ian: Doors open as a guy ready to get in.
Wayne: She's faced with like eight buttons, eight levels of visiting the floor. I never got back to the room as fast as I could. And then the second time she did it, she did it as the person was walking in. Yeah. The Burbank button bandit. Yeah, the Burbank button bandit. That's Kaz uh of East M system. We're not going to get invited to get back next year. That's it. We're screwed. So yeah, uh, stand by. What other great stands do we have? Well, we got we've got to talk about um our friend. Oh, cock oil. Cock oil. Cock oil. Now we have a little bit of history with cock oil. Well, Ian's got history with cock oil because he strangled their chicken. I choked their chicken and then snapped his head off. And snapped his head off.
Ian: However, super glue is your friend.
Wayne: Yeah, if you want to see the video of this, then it probably exists somewhere on the live stream. Because it has popped up on your live stream a couple of times. Cock oil is basically lube company. Best branding in the world. Fantastic branding. I mean, I am so jealous of their branding. Yep. Because it comes in like little oil cans. And incidentally, he's a racer. He erases. Yeah, I learned that this show. Man of many talents. Yeah. One of the things that people forget a lot of business. A lot of us help each other out. Yeah. I mean, Ian, technically, you could argue Ian is a competing company because he sells our stuff. Well, he sells our stuff. But he also sells stuff from the competition. Mm-hmm. I am, yep, yep. Therefore, he's he's taking money out of my my children's mouths. Yeah. Thanks, Ian. No, the thing is, there's a lot of people who are willing to help out. I mean, we we turned up with nothing in in terms of the show, in terms of the stand. And we have people saying, is there anything we can do to help? Whilst on the subject of dildos, Ian, especially light up ones, could you possibly explain to the viewers, stroke listeners, the issue that you had over the dildos in Vegas and the swimming pool? And actually, should I give you a little bit more information just to the background pictures of?
Ian: I did. They would look really nice. It was dusk, starting to get dark, these glow-in-the-dark and disco dildos on a raft in the middle of the swimming pool. I wonder if they were the same ones. They probably were, yeah. So took a really good picture of the hotel with the dildos floating in the pool. My mum then asked, How is it going over there? Really, really good. Can you send me some pictures? Now she doesn't know that I'm over here, or I was over there doing an adult trade show. Does she know what you do? No, not really. So anyway, I was no glasses on, flicking from your phone. Oh, that's a good picture of the hotel. Ping sends it. The wife got it as well, and she says, Um, did you mean to send that picture? Uh Glasses on, looks at a picture, and it's it's a See a floating dildos in a swimming floor. Awkward. She didn't say anything. But you never know. So yeah, that was one of the she probably does know. She probably does know, yeah.
Target Disney And A Retail Reality Check
Wayne: She's not daft. Now we went shopping a few times to Tarjay. Target. Also, the Americans call it Target, but we call it Tarjay. It's a big supermarket. Posh it up a bit. Yeah, it's posh up a bit. One because we have to get sugar cookies. And there we are. For those of you who are watching this on video, these are sugar cookies. You don't really get them in the UK. No. But sugar cookies are really nice. And uh we uh caramel cold brew MMs were being searched for, but we never found any. No. And also Twinkies. Didn't find any, did we? No Twinkies. No. The notorious Twinkies. The notorious Twinkies. Ian loves Twinkies. Oh yeah. Ian is a connoisseur of blowjob blonde Twinkies. I deep throat Twinkies, yeah. He deep throats Twinkies. Ian is known for sticking straws up his nose. Just my nose. Yeah. Just what else would you stick? Oh no, don't ask me.
Ian: Yeah, don't ask, no.
Wayne: Yeah, and then we also did a bit of shopping. We went to a Disney outlet store. You can't go to America without doing something Disney because Kaz is so Disney obsessed. Yep. And uh yeah, addicted to Disney.uk if anyone's interested in what she gets up to in Disney. She'll like the fact that I've plugged. That's a good plug, that. That's some brownie points there. Uh no, actually the plugs we bought from Pleasure Chest. I wasn't going to mention them. Pleasure chest, yes, the company that doesn't stock us in America. Yeah. Not yet. Not yet. If anyone's from Pleasure Chest listening to this, um please give us a call. We'd like to supplement the rather meager stock of MyStim that you had in your Hollywood store. Quite disappointing, really. Can do better. Um staff were very nice. Um yeah, pleasure chests in Hollywood. I thought we'd we'd pay a visit and uh it was good. It was worth it. Yeah. Pricing was, yeah, adult store, and there's some interesting furniture in there. There was some very expensive furniture in there. Some very yeah, very expensive furniture. But yeah, no, it was a nice store. This is where I started to get personal and ask the real questions that everyone wants answering. Most people know how you started with e-stim because let's face it, it's the story of, yeah, they contacted us. Yeah. We'd we went, oh yeah, why not? We give them some freebies and the rest is history. Indeed. There was um there's a leather company on the socials at the moment which does some stunning leather harness work with three two B's on it. Oh, I've seen that, yeah. And I looked and gone, I so want there. That is a good picture. Um, so if if you're listening, that is really, really good. There are some astonishingly good creators out there who have got brains the size of a planet, I think is the term, and skills to match. There is some fantastic leather work out there. It and and latex as well. Yeah. Those of you really know me, yeah, I I do like latex and and leather and restraints and things like that, because that's how we sort of started getting into fetishy stuff. And yeah, there the the nice thing is these days, yeah, you get the crappy stuff that's being sold at the chains, but yeah, there are some seriously good creators out there. So support your local creator, especially E-Stim Systems, because we still consider ourselves to be local artisan creators. Absolutely. The question I'm going to ask is how did you actually start doing anything in terms of the adult industry?
From Army Life To Stuntcock
Ian: The adult industry, right. Um, I left the army after 23 and a half years, went into a rather mundane job. Um what did you do? I managed a campsite. Okay. Tents, caravans, tours. Get off my land. Yeah, get off my land. So I did that for two and a half years and then got thoroughly bored with it, because I was working six and a half days a week, which just grinds you down. So left that. Um, had a bit of free time, so I've got a quite nice army pension. And we decided after reading an article about a girl called Kara Sutra, we thought we can do that, we can review some sex toys. So we started by reviewing the kit we already had. So we had a portfolio, as it were, of work that we'd already done. And then here's one we did earlier. Yeah, and we were looking at sex machines, dildos, you know, the user sort of normal run-of-the-mill stuff. And a post popped up on the. I think 20 years ago you could still you could say that normal sex machines. I was normaler than we are now.
Wayne: Yeah.
Ian: Yeah. I we now put the ab in normal. Um, but yeah, a a post popped up on Twitter about E-Stim. It was E-Stim Systems, and we were like, what the heck is that? And it piqued our interest, and Joanne got in touch, and the rest is history. And we've never looked back. Don't look back because of people chasing us.
Wayne: Yeah, with a big tank, probably. Do you do you think any I mean, I I'm curious now. Do you do you think your your career in the army helped in any way?
Ian: Um yes and no. I mean, I haven't had to stab anyone with a bayonet, thankfully, um, since leaving.
Wayne: Um, but Okay, I I've got I'm gonna because people are now gonna ask the question did you stab anyone with a bayonet? I'm saying nothing.
Ian: No, one of the things the army teaches you is organisational skills and keeping going when things are rough. You know, finding a way to make things work, which is a really good skill in business.
Wayne: Especially if you're shipping, if you're using VMH help. Maybe I'll get you to do the shipping.
Ian: So a lot of the stuff I did in the army um has benefited me in my business that I'm running now and what we do. Um, and it's nice to be in an industry where you actually enjoy what you do. You know, you enjoy your work. You're not, it's not a nine to five job where you get out of bed in the morning and think, oh god, how many hours have I got to do today? Simply because you're working all hours of every day. Yeah, it's fun.
Wayne: Um, yeah, I think generally, yeah, I agree. It is fun. I mean, there's definitely with with you, there's definitely this sort of core of yeah, we've got Frankie the tanky. Oh I was wondering why we've got the the fifth 155mm gun sticking out of the top. People and we all have to walk around with flank jackets. Um health and safety. Health and safety. Oh, yeah, let's not talk about health and safety. But yeah, the the whole working almost constantly, I I do a lot of things because I enjoy them. Yeah. There's yeah, there is a probably 20% of my job, I do things because I have to. It's part of the job. But a lot of the stuff I do, the development, the ideas, the improving things, that's the stuff I actually enjoy. Going back to Shopify, one of the things I've noticed, I see people on the various Facebook groups of Shopify, and they do the I've got Shopify, how do I get sales? Yeah, it's over this much. I bought the till. Yeah, if you've got no understanding as to how to sell something or have something that you're interested in, then and unfortunately, there's an awful lot of people who are selling t-shirt printing. Yeah. But they're they're they're just seeing it as a way to make money because they don't create a chance to do that. All they're doing is take the order, place the order with the t-shirt printers. There's no extras there, there's no ownership. I mean, if you go back to the latex and leather that we just mentioned, at least those people have those skills that they're creating something and they can be unique. And they understand their market base as well. Yeah.
Ian: And that's important. You better be able to do that.
Wayne: But the market for a lot of things, especially if it's something you enjoy. Yeah. And this is the key. If you enjoy it, the first market is yourself. Yeah. Because that's how you got into it in the first place. It was you buying it, going, Oh, I can improve it. I can do that, I can make it better. And and the latex creators or the leather creators, they're they're sort of they're looking at other people's stuff and going, Oh, I can do this. And they're learning how to make the leather stuff. And in fact, I must confess, I'm sort of looking at maybe get some simple tools and have a go. I think that would be quite therapeutic. You know, quite stabbing leather with blue. Stabbing leather and slicing stuff. I could use your bayonet.
Ian: You could, you could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd get your own. Do you still have it? Uh no, I don't know. Not admitting it anyway.
Wayne: Not admitting it, yeah. It's probably still got the the blood ingrained blood.
Ian: Bayonets,
Why Making In House Still Matters
Ian: a lot of people think they're sharp, they're not. Bayonets aren't sharp. But they are pointy. They are very stabby. They're very stabby. That's what they're doing. I'm sure that leads into spikes. Oh, which is why I don't like spikes. Yeah, we don't like spikes. No, we don't like.
Wayne: We can discuss spikes. Oh, you've gotten there. The number of people that we spoke to over the last three days who love the fact that we manufacture the stuff in-house. We're not just pulling in bits off a container. Would you do it again? What? The show? Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Ian: Would you do it if it if we didn't do it? Well, I couldn't afford to do it with our little media enterprise. But if I was to do it again with you, I'd have to say, can we have a stand next time?
Wayne: Maybe we'll use UPS this time. It'll only take three weeks to get here. Every single courier shipping system has problems from time to time. Yeah. You just have to have plan A, plan B, and plan C. And I haven't been in the army. No plan survives contact with the enemy. Simple as that. Yeah, in our case, no plan survives contact with anything. DHL. DHL, yes. What did you call them? DH Hell. DH Hell, yes. Thank you, DHL. Anyway, we're we've nearly run out of time because the girls are probably cooked themselves in the pool. Certainly one of my cameras itself. But yeah, I'd like to um thank Ian from the bottom of my heart for being here. It's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure. It means that I haven't crashed the car because I didn't have to drive. I've just been pointing in the direction, go, go that way. Find any Twinkies.
Ian: I know.
Wayne: But we did go to a sex shop. Didn't find any Twinkies in there either. That's a different type of Twinkie. Exactly. One thing I I did find quite funny is we actually found people who had more bizarre jobs than we did.
Ian: Oh god, yeah.
Wayne: My job, what's my job? Well, I run a podcast called I Make Sex Toys. And I make sex toys. So that's what I do. Yep. We had a masturbation coach. Wank instructor. A wank instructor. If you've actually managed all the way through this podcast to us, that's the first time we've actually said anything adult, you're doing quite well. But yeah, she was lovely. Um, a couple of journalists, they were fun. Oh, they were lovely. I quite enjoyed having a chat to this particular one because she was quite complimentary over the fact that when she asked us who does this appeal to, I didn't say everyone. Yeah. Because ESTEM is one of those things, it it doesn't appeal to everyone. It appeals in different ways to different groups of people. And we're always astounded by how varied those groups of people are and how varied people's experience with Easterm is. And we've been doing it for yeah, 22 years at this point. And every day people come out with new things and new ideas. And these are people using our kit and going, oh yeah, I I do it this way. And we're like, I never thought of doing it that way. But yeah, it it's been fantastic, and we we've we've enjoyed it, it's been great. It's I love America. I love what we do. I I love Easter, I love the customers, I love the people who sit there for 45 minutes and listen to a podcast. Although I might edit it down a little bit because there's probably a few bits that I need to cut out before I get sued by DHL. But yeah, I mean there's the cock oils of this world, great guys. The the the little independent stores have come to see us, which is fantastic because I'm a massive fan of small scale, small stores who know what they do, they know their customers. Yeah, they uh in the same way that we have artisan creators, latex, leather, those stores out there who are still surviving, not just surviving, but thriving. Creating an industry, creating the ability to sell our product to their customers and having fun doing it, and that's the key thing. I mean, and that's why we do the shows. I I think it was Vegas where I pointed tried to point out that this wasn't a holiday. But actually, no, it's not a holiday. If the tax man's listening, this is definitely not a holiday. But actually, we just spent the last four days having fun, giggling, giggling, laughing, joking, laughing, not taking ourselves too seriously. I mean, let's face it, I'm sitting in a hotel room, it's 40 degrees outside, the girls are in the pool, and I'm talking to a camera that keeps moving like this, which you probably can't even see if you're listening to the audio version of this podcast. But anyway, I'm gonna stop waffling.
Thanks Subscribe And Be Safe
Wayne: This is Wayne from E-Stim Systems talking about sex toys on I Make Sex Toys, and I'd like to thank Ian. You're most welcome. Also known as Stuntcock. Oh, yeah. And I'd like to thank everyone who's visited our stand. I'd like to thank you all for listening and being sad enough to actually listen to me driveling on for the last 40 minutes. Thank you for that. If you like what we're doing, please consider subscribing if you're listening to us on YouTube or seeing us on YouTube, or leave a comment or share it with your friends, you know, all the sort of things that that help us, our little small channels. But yeah, thank you very much. Thank you, Ian. Thank you, outside, thank you, inside, thank you, everyone. It's been a blast. And we'll see you on the next one. But whatever you do, please be safe, have fun, and thanks for listening. Bye.
