They lost my loyalty a couple of years ago, and I'd be willing to bet that part of their troubles are because I'm far from the only one.
A few years back, they started a big growth-and-self-branding thing, coinciding with their sale (it's no longer the local worker-coop it was), but I'm not sure whether the sale came before the changes to their personality, or after.
I couldn't find products I'd always gone there for, they'd replaced them with higher-priced, lower-quality, but otherwise similar items. The staff didn't seem as helpful anymore. I stopped feeling like I was going into a sex-positive, feminist-sex-is-fun little store and started feeling like I was going into a Sex Store. Then I saw that Blowfish had all the cool toys that GV used to have, for half the price of their similar items, and . . . switched.
I still go into the store, when I need a good local sex store, and I'd like to see it last for that if no other reason. (Hell, I bought my first vibe at GV something like 24 years ago.) But I find myself wondering what they did to bring this on themselves.
(Okay, reading that Carol Queen is the chair of the board of directors makes me wonder: What is it now? Still a coop? Did the official owner change, but the structure remain the same? Was the plan to switch it out of coop-ness dumped? At any rate: They've still lost their glimmer, in my eyes.)
I'm not sure what their current structure is. I know that they bought out Joani Blank, the original founder, some years ago.
I haven't been too pleased with them in recent years either. I do appreciate their commitment to holding drop-in classes, though, as well as their historical role in encouraging Americans to talk about sex and sex toys without whispering.
I guess I should honor the history. They were very important in their time, and still are to a large degree. I just compare them to ten or fifteen years ago, and sigh a bit.
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A few years back, they started a big growth-and-self-branding thing, coinciding with their sale (it's no longer the local worker-coop it was), but I'm not sure whether the sale came before the changes to their personality, or after.
I couldn't find products I'd always gone there for, they'd replaced them with higher-priced, lower-quality, but otherwise similar items. The staff didn't seem as helpful anymore. I stopped feeling like I was going into a sex-positive, feminist-sex-is-fun little store and started feeling like I was going into a Sex Store. Then I saw that Blowfish had all the cool toys that GV used to have, for half the price of their similar items, and . . . switched.
I still go into the store, when I need a good local sex store, and I'd like to see it last for that if no other reason. (Hell, I bought my first vibe at GV something like 24 years ago.) But I find myself wondering what they did to bring this on themselves.
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I haven't been too pleased with them in recent years either. I do appreciate their commitment to holding drop-in classes, though, as well as their historical role in encouraging Americans to talk about sex and sex toys without whispering.
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