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New Jersey- from www.nj.com – The handcuffs are flying out the door. So are the floggers. Whips and rope? Forget about it.
“Things that were selling out in a week are selling out in a day,” said Nick Smerecki, manager of Adult Playtime Boutique in Edison, where sales are up 400 percent over last year. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Adult shops across the region have seen a boom in business in recent months thanks to the publication of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” an erotic novel by British writer E.L. James. The book, which details the relationship between naive college literature student Anastasia Steele and a dark but brilliant billionaire Christian Grey, dabbles in BDSM — or bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism.
“It’s definitely done wonders for the adult industry,” Smerecki said of the book, published in May 2011 and mainstream now, but initially hard to get.
Diego Rivera, manager of Essex Adult Emporium in Fairfield and Pleasure Plus Video in Saddle Brook, said the book has been a gift to shops like his.
“The adult industry took a hit with the internet, but now that the book came out, nobody wants to wait,” he said. “They come in the store to buy everything in the book.”
The emporium went from selling four or five of a certain unmentionable item each week to selling 45 of them, and Rivera said he can’t keep some fetish toys on the shelves. In addition to a “Fifty Shades of Grey” workshop, he said, the store sells the book alongside a supermarket-like display of items that are referenced in its pages.
“People come in and say, ‘My wife read the book,’ and they want all the items,” Rivera said. “One customer said it was one of the best things written for couples — it spiced up their life.”
The book’s main character, Steele, works part-time in a Seattle-area hardware store. Ah, the irony. The New York Post reported that women are heading to city hardware stores in droves to buy rope, another must-have from the book, and store owners believe it’s precisely because of the novel.
So what gives?
“My theory is that we’re all so wired with working and family responsibilities, but (the book) can help you rediscover the imitate part of your relationship,” said Margot Sage-El, owner of Watchung Booksellers in Montclair. Her shop began selling self-published copies of the book in January.
“It pulls people back to reality again,” added Sage-El, who said she hasn’t read the book but has spoken with many who have. “People are allowing themselves to indulge in stuff like this again.”
But Jeff Mach of Hackensack, 37, who noted he has been a member of the BDSM community in New Jersey for 16 years, compares the book with Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby.”
“There was a huge uptick in an interest in rap, and many who didn’t know much about it became interested because this was something that made it acceptable and approachable,” Mach said. “And a lot of people who were familiar with rap thought it watered down the genre.”
Mach, noting he recently saw “Fifty Shades of Grey” on display in a Barnes & Nobles store, said the book has brought the usually non-mainstream subject of BDSM out into the open.
“Some people might who may have been a little quiet about it are less quiet, and some people who realized that they might have such an interest found a door open and started checking it out,” he said.
Smerecki agreed, saying his store door is certainly being opened by the formerly shy and newly curious.
“It’s showing them it’s not as bad and as taboo as they think it is,” he said.