. OVER THE EDGE eruner, 10-14, 2007 iavgest Adult Store in Western Canada Opens TasatHa LunpHoLm Arts Epiror The following is an interview with Michael F. Pockett, the owner of the new Shagg Boutique. Shagg opened on August 20, and it’s now the largest adult store in Western Canada. What were your goals in opening the store? We noticed that Prince George - as well as the adult indus- try - was lacking in a store that we felt matched our custom- er’s needs, insofar as our customers are classy, higher-end, and all the stores we saw around were lower-end, didn’t care about décor, didn’t care about women’s issues, they weren’t addressing any of that. So we decided to go against all the trends and just do something differ- ent. How long have you been in the adult industry? Over ten years, and it wasn’t be- ing done right. Nobody was doing it right, so I just thought that we should go out on a branch ourselves. When did the dream begin? Probably two years ago, and then one year ago we actually got into ac- tion. We put our money where our mouth is, and it’s taken a complete F year to plan and get financing, find suppliers, store fixtures, lighting, and we started construction May 15. § Was this all your design? Yes, again that’s my history. My history is retail design, store de- signs, and store display. I’ve worked at Holt Renfrew, Channel, some of the top retailers in Canada in store design. I just decided to bring some of that knowledge forward and bring it into an adult store. So this is the biggest adult store in Western Canada? There is a video store in Van- couver that claims to be the largest adult stores. Prince George, on the other hand, was wide-open welcome. We were really thrilled. We went right in, signed the papers, and got our business plan and license within a couple of weeks. As a matter of fact the mayor as congratulated us personally on opening our store. And the name, Shagg? The government doesn’t like our name. We originally ap- plied for Shagg, but the government turned us down. So what we did was soften it down a bit, so our legal registered name is Blue Velvet Shagg, unfortunately. We tried twenty differ- ent names, we did market research, but this one really stuck out. People always comment on our name. And it is everything adult, aside from hemp paraphernalia, which we won’t do. TYLER CLARKE, Propuction CoorDINATOR video store, and they are. They’re Shagg Boutique owner Michael F. Pockett in his brand new store. huge! Over a hundred thousand vid- eos, unbelievable. Tom’s Video. But from what we can find, we are the largest adult store, and we carry a little bit of everything. Is that what you were aiming for? No, this space came up and it was in rough shape, but it was beautiful and in a great location. It took us almost 8 months to get possession of this place... But the space just presented itself and we thought “Yeah, we can fill this!” How’s the erotic bakery coming along? Slowly. Unfortunately Prince George isn’t as liberal as we thought, and a lot of the bakers won’t touch it, due to per- sonal reasons, religious reasons, whatever. Fingers crossed, though... Hopefully we’ll be going within two weeks. We’ll have three different types of cakes, four different types of cookies (different shapes), and then chocolates. Thirty to forty different types of chocolates. And with the cakes and cookies the designs are endless. Whatever you want written on them you can. Preorder a couple days ahead. It’ll be cool, and I’m excited. A lot of people have been commenting on it when they come into the store. Everybody’s excited, and they can think of where they can buy cookies, you know “Let’s get cookies for the staff party!” or “Oh, Uncle Bob’s birthday’s coming up, let’s get him a cake!” I’ve never heard of it anywhere else, in any other adult store, so I don’t know if we’re pioneers there, or what, but I think it’s cool. You mentioned that Prince George isn’t as liberal as you’d like, are you coming up against that a lot? No, just the opposite actually. Prince George, overall, is really great. I’ve worked in several adult stores in other cities and I was involved with one that looked for locations, and it’s very difficult to find a location, because most cities don’t want Are you purposely trying to stay away from hemp? Yes, yes. Our market - probably a large percentage - are hemp smokers, or hemp users, but we have found that that can create some uncomfortableness with non-smokers. So we decided to let other businesses do that, and I’m not against it, but we just chose not to go that avenue. So you worked at XXXtreme Adult, did that provide some fodder? Yes, well, I’ve worked in the adult industry for seven years, I managed a whole chain of stores in Calgary a long time ago, and I had actually vowed never to be in the adult industry after that. But when XX Xtreme presented and asked me to be Man- ager, I thought “Ok, I’ll try this for a little while”. XXXtreme Adult did give me a lot of knowledge, I can’t deny that. But I finally decided that I wanted to do my own, so here we are. What do you hope for the future of Shagg? Shagg holds huge potential, a huge bright future. As the days go on, people are really expressing how they like the store, asking if it’s a franchise, asking if it’s a chain, they ask all the great questions. We want to be the Tim Horton’s of the adult industry, and also the Holt Renfrew, very high-end, all quality, all class. Also, lots of couples are coming in, which is what we wanted. We’re also getting people that wouldn’t usually come into an adult store. Because the windows are open, because it’s bright, and because the videos are secluded on the second floor, so people who are offended don’t have to see it. More people are being adventurous, and we’re seeing a whole lot more couples come in, which is exactly where we wanted to be, it was what we were targeting. No complaints yet. But there are conservatives out there, there are the right-wing people, and we expect that. Every adult store goes through that. We don’t want that, and we don’t want to offend people, I want to focus in on that we don’t destroy marriages, we don’t promote promiscuity, we don’t promote any unsafe practices, we want to enhance relationships, we want to enhance self-exploration, and we want to combat the AIDS crisis by providing condoms and safe-sex alternatives. We want people to be able to ex- plore their sexual selves in a non-threatening environment. In a place where they’re not going to feel dirty, and don’t have to feel ashamed. Everyone has sex, and everyone comes from a product of sex, so why feel ashamed? And that’s a wonderful thing, in my opinion, so why should we have it hidden in tiny stores in a back alley? Another focus is our education. In our mission statement at the front of the store states that we want to provide education on sexuality and sensuality, and we’ve trained our staff to learn, to explore, to share that knowledge with our customers. There’s a lot of - misinformation out there, things that people have heard through the grape- | vine, or through Aunt Bessie who i teaches you about sex-ed. There’s a lot misinformation, so that’s our job to educate and have people make the right choices. Is it all females who work here at the store? = 6. No, both males and females work here. I want a mix of people because some people prefer to talk to men, and some people prefer to talk to women. Again, it’s all about comfort. If you’ re not comfortable talking about sexual issues with a man, then we’ll find you a female staff member to come in and talk with you about it. In the future we plan on holding workshops and providing a classroom area from Massage for Couples to cooking les- sons on how to cook a sensual meal. It also goes along the lines for education. Most adult stores want a quick buck. They want to get in and get out (no pun intended). We don’t want to do that, we want to educate. That’s a mandate that I’ve always had, that education sells. Instead of trying to hard- press someone to buy something, why don’t you just educate them and let them make their own decisions? And that works. People don’t like pressure. They don’t like being told yin to buy. With this environment we want fun and funky. We want open, we want the college/university market. It’s a big market as well as the couples and married couples. The music we have is thumpin’ sometimes, and sometimes it’s smooth and classy, it depends on what time of day it is. We want to cater to a lot of different people. We cater to the male market, too, which are the movies and magazines. We have a complete couples section, too. We’ve pulled movies that we thought might be more geared towards couples, with beautiful men and beauti- ful women, story-lines, fantasies, that sort of thing. What about branching onto the internet? We kind of don’t want to. It’s an overcrowded place, and there are way bigger companies than us, there are way bigger internet companies and video companies on the internet that we can’t possibly compete with all those. We will have a web- site that states information about us; where we are, what we carry, our future plans and all that kind of stuff. But as for the internet market, we’ll look into it and see how things go, but I don’t see us getting into that. If there’s a demand, and people are asking for Shagg products, we'll respond. But I don’t see that happening any time soon. One step at a time. THANK YOU!!