HILLSBOROUGH, North Carolina — The three-story brick office and warehouse looks like any other building in a nondescript office park.

The sign simply says PHE Inc.

The Orange County Senior Center is just down the street. A family doctor’s office sits across the street.

There is absolutely no indication that PHE is the company most people know as Adam & Eve.

In the vernacular of the nation’s $8 billion sex industry, Adam & Eve is part of the adult entertainment business. To most people, Adam & Eve is the place that sells sex toys, X-rated movies and other sexually oriented material.

PHE’s two names perfectly reflect its dual personality.

PHE, which stands for Phil Harvey Enterprises, seems a bit boring — a warehouse full of brown boxes stacked to the ceiling. There’s shipping and receiving, accounting and record keeping departments, rows of computers with women answering telephones.

Walk in the front door, and nothing immediately hints of the products being sold and distributed. But look closer and personality of the business peeks out of every corner of the warehouse and office.

The trophies in the glass cabinet in the corner of the lobby are for prize-winning adult movies. Look in one of those boring brown cartons and you’ll see a box of scandalous videos.

Check out an office: A picture of someone’s daughter, a drawing by a small child, a UNC basketball schedule. Normal, except next to the child’s picture is an autographed poster of naked porn stars. And the UNC basketball schedule hangs next to a calendar with photos of sexy women in strange positions.

The dual personality also is reflected in the story of the birth of the company and how it grew — from a non-profit helping Third World nations with population control into a nationally known mail-order sex business.

In 1970, Phil Harvey obtained a master’s degree at UNC in international family planning, and he and his school colleague, Dr. Tim Black, began an organization to distribute condoms outside of standard channels to Third World countries. They kept their operation in the area where they had gone to school.

From that humble beginning, Harvey began selling condoms through the mail in 1970. Through the years, he added to his product line.

When the company moved its headquarters to N.C. 54 west of Carrboro, nearby residents were more concerned about environmental issues than the products PHE sold. But that changed when Harvey decided to move the company to a bigger facility in Hillsborough a decade ago.

The company needed more space. The Meadowlands was zoned for businesses like PHE, Harvey said. It offered power, sewer and plenty of room for parking. Harvey also didn’t want to leave Orange County because he didn’t want to lose the employees he already had, he said.

At first, some members of the Hillsborough community fought the move. But Harvey agreed the business would not offer services — even a catalog — to walk-in customers.

In 1986, however, federal and local law enforcement officers wanted a closer look. They raided the company, perhaps expecting to find a bunch of sleazy drug dealers and half-naked porn stars in the building, Harvey recalled.

What they found, to their surprise, was Harvey in his Hush Puppy shoes and a group of employees that included grandmothers, church-going Christians, family men, mothers and daughters, he said.

Janie Miles, a 53-year-old grandmother from Burlington, has worked at PHE for nearly 15 years. She said she was a bit uneasy when she first came to work for the company.

“Of course, it was a little taboo, the sexual industry,” she said. “I got to learn that the company itself is a great company. They are fair, and the company does have concern for the employees.”

Working at PHE does create some problems for the employees, but it also creates a common bond for them, Harvey said.

It’s called the “what do you tell your mother syndrome,” he said.

“Some people are so comfortable with dealing with sexually-oriented products, they don’t worry about it. They tell their mother. That’s what I do,” Harvey said.

Libby Lynn, 31, who works in marketing and promotions, is one of those employees.

“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said. “We sell a very valuable product for people who need it.”

Lynn said some very religious Christians have tried to convince her that Adam & Eve is not a good place to work, but that no one from her church has ever said anything to her about it.

Some employees are conflicted about working at Adam & Eve. But they usually are people who see sexuality and sexually oriented products in a negative light, she said. Lynn said she believes that what Adam & Eve sells is a healthy addition to people’s sex lives.

Others don’t feel so comfortable about telling their friends and family where they work. Katy Zvolerin, PHE’s director of public relations, said one employee keeps her job a secret from her mother.

Miles admits she was a bit reluctant to tell her friends and family when she first started working at PHE. But now she tells everyone, she said, even the people at her church.

“I didn’t want to say I worked for Adam & Eve, but now it’s like, ‘Hey, the company is great,’ ” she said. “We are not bad people. There is a lot of good from the company.”

Adam & Eve has been a good corporate citizen, said Hillsborough Town Manager Eric Peterson.

“They’ve definitely been an asset to Hillsborough,” he said. “They’re one of the biggest employers. One of the biggest taxpayers.”

PHE budgets $60,000 a year for donations, and gives money to a variety of charities, including the March of Dimes, the Ronald McDonald House, the American Cancer Society, Planned Parenthood, Muscular Dystrophy, Special Olympics, St. Jude Hospital, the Educational Foundation for Orange County Schools, the Hillsborough Rotary Club, The Triangle United Way and the Partnership for Young Children, Zvolerin said.

It also has donated thousands of condoms to the Orange County Health Department.

“They have regularly helped us out with the donation of condoms,” said Rosemary Summers, the department’s executive director. “They always are very generous and rarely get recognized for the positive things that they do.”

Zvolerin believes local businesses welcome Adam & Eve.

“With 300 or more employees, we’ve brought a lot of business to the area,” she said.

The company employs about 380 people. Last year, the company grossed $90 million, with about $70 million of that coming through the mail order business in Hillsborough, Harvey said.

Not that long ago, Adam & Eve was the No. 1 mail order company in its field. But the Internet opened the door for anyone to get into the business, even someone just selling items out of their garage, Zvolerin said.

“For years and years, we were the big dogs, but the Internet kind of changed all that,” she said.

Harvey said it’s difficult to determine where the company now ranks in its field because it depends on what it’s compared to, he said.

Adam & Eve’s competition comes from a variety of sources, including lingerie stores like Victoria’s Secret, adult-video companies, sex toy companies, as well as Internet sites. Even companies like Amazon.com now sell adult videos on its Web site, Harvey said.

Seventy percent of Adam & Eve’s customers are male. About half of its employees are men.

In addition to distributing its products, the company produces high-budget adult videos. But that work is all done in California. It also has other subsidiaries, including AdamMale, a catalog and Web site for homosexual men.

Harvey no longer is involved in the company’s day-to-day business. Still, he visits regularly and seems to know most of the employees by their first name.

“I’ve become something of a house guru, not quite a figurehead yet,” he said.

But Harvey, who now lives in Maryland, remains involved with population control and AIDS prevention through his non-profit company called DKT International in Washington, D.C.

Harvey has given $2 million a year for the past 10 years to DKT, which uses social marketing techniques to popularize the use of condoms and make them easily available and affordable in eight countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America in an effort to prevent unwanted pregnancies and stop the spread of AIDS.

Some may imagine the founder and president of Adam & Eve to be a Hugh Hefner type, but Harvey couldn’t be more different.

“I just don’t have any appetite for that lifestyle,” he said.

Harvey looks and dresses like a college professor. When he recently flew from Washington to North Carolina, did he jump in a private jet for a quick trip?

“Good Lord, no,” he said. “I can fly round trip from Washington for $144.”

He admits to some personal luxuries. “My wife and I go salmon fishing in Alaska every other summer,” he said.

But they only go every other summer.

“It is very expensive,” he said.