I'm Katie, a 3o-something Northern girl, living in the South of England. Please don't call me Kate. Or Katherine. Katie will do just fine. Unless you're my mother, in which case I'd rather you didn't read this anyway.
Back in 2001, I left my full time 'proper' job to have my first child. Until then I had been working in a reasonably successful role as a Sales Manager for a local, but fairly well-established business. My earnings had always been fairly decent, but Matt (my husband) and I decided that we'd have a good shot at living without my wages while I stayed home to raise our family.
To cut a very long story short, by around 2003 I had started to get a bit of my independence back; a bit of 'me' time. Our son was in nursey - not every day, but enough to give me a break - and this gave me the opportunity to start thinking about returning to work. I kind of wanted to go back to work, but it was the 'going back' bit that worried me. Although it was only a couple of years, I felt as though I'd fallen right out of the system, and was genuinely quite scared about going back into a job.
We talked about the idea of me working for myself. I liked it in principal, meaning that I could do as much or as little as I wanted to, depending on what time I had with little one at nursery. But I really wasn't sure what I could do.
I scoured newspapers almost daily, local magazines, Daltons thingy and Exchange and Wotsit looking for franchise / work from home / business in a box type ideas, but everything was either too expensive or else just didn't seem appropriate. All I did in my spare time was read classifieds. Well, that's ALMOST all that I did...
A couple of times a week, I'd take advantage of 'me time' by trotting off upstairs, and spending a few minutes 'indulging' in myself. Nothing too hardcore, but I enjoyed these fantasy moments alone. I'd been married for a couple of years by now, and although the love was there, the physical bit between us hadn't really returned after child birth. But I still had urges, and I suppose just very basic needs to satisfy myself.
It was on one such occasion that my story really starts. Now, it wasn't how I imagined an epiphany moment would present itself, but there it is. I was on my bed, dressed only from the waist up, with a mirror being squeezed between my knees. I'll leave it to your imagination what the purpose of the mirror was...
But anyway, that's when it came to me. You see, I loved sex toys. I had an absolute fascination with them; using them, buying them, even just looking at them. I owned a couple, maybe three. But something about them just fascinated me. And as I looked at my little tartan cloth bag which I used to store my toys, it just dawned on me that what I actually wanted to do was to work in the sex toys business.
And that, basically, is the beginning of my story; that's where it all began. I spent a couple of days finding wholesale suppliers, applied for a couple of trade accounts, and got myself accepted. Easy!
I designed myself a web site. I already had some basic skills (in fact they weren't basic at all, they were quite good!). Before long I'd populated this site with loads of marital aids, and was ready to roll. Three or four months later, I began to buy traffic, and within no time at all, I'd started to take orders for vibrators, rabbits, sex dolls, all sorts of things. I was in heaven.
Along the way, I've redesigned as necessary. Some times to bring new functionality, other times just to brighten things up, or to try to somehow improve the customer experience. And now, several years later, I operate a couple of web sites, all trading under different names to appeal to different 'sectors' of the market, but all fitting under one umbrella (ella...ella...). My main site is at www.vibrators2u.co.uk and I'm pleased to say we ship quite a few parcels now on a daily basis, and (in my totally biased opinion!) offer a fantastic level of customer service. This seems to be proven by the repeat business that we get which, while I'd love more, is at a very acceptable level.
I'm still absolutely hooked on sex toys. Every time a new product update arrives I'm beside myself with excitement. I can't say I've tried them all - I've got literally thousands of different vibrators, rabbit vibrators, male sex dolls, lubricants, etc etc - but whenever something catches my eye, I give it a go. And these days I pay wholesale rates for my pleasure!
So, what's the purpose of this blog? Two-fold really: 1) it means I get to indulge in my passion by writing about this topic, and 2) rather shamelessly, it allows me to bring a few more people to my web site by way of the links that are here (well, at least it's honest)
As this grows, I intend to write product reviews on things that I have actually used and tested MYSELF, I'll bring you updates of any new products that I fancy writing about, and I might even share a story or two with you. I'll make the rest of it up as I go along, and see if anyone actually reads it. If not, I'll still enjoy writing it anyway, so I can't lose.
So there it is - that's How I Used Vibrators... to make me some money! Now that I've set the scene, I'll be back very soon to give you the first of my bloggy posts. I can't wait
x
