Word: annelies
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...content with selling 400,000 vibrators a year in Britain, privately held Ann Summers has embarked on an aggressive expansion program. It is increasing the number of its British stores to 75 and pushing its Internet sales. In July it opened the first overseas Ann Summers shop, in Sydney, Australia. Earlier this month it opened a new two-story, 5,000-sq.-ft. store--complete with a coffee bar--on Dublin's fashionable O'Connell Street. And the firm plans to open outlets early next year in Tokyo and even Saudi Arabia. Gold is also keen to take...
Women are a lucrative, if previously ignored, market for sex merchants. And Ann Summers--"a company run by women for women"--has successfully homed in using traditional grass-roots marketing techniques, mainly home-party sales. "We're exactly like Tupperware, but a bit more fun," explains Gold. Ann Summers hauled in $22.5 million for the year ending June 30, 1998. Seventy percent came from home-party sales (which include Internet and catalog purchases); the shops account for the rest. But that equation may soon change...
...Ann Summers is not the only European sex chain with international ambitions. Germany's Beate Uhse--which also takes an upmarket, Main Street approach to marketing erotic paraphernalia--stunned local financial markets in May when its initial public offering of 8.4 million shares was 63 times oversubscribed. It is now one of Germany's hottest stocks, trading in the $19 range. Beate Uhse is likewise expanding operations elsewhere in Europe and beyond. In September the company acquired a chain of 44 "erotic discount centers," plus a Dutch mail-order company that offers a full range of sex toys, videos...
...provides a nearly perfect vehicle for reaching well-heeled customers with a taste for vinyl pushup bras or fur-lined handcuffs. Ann Summers got into Internet sales in the past two years and says its site www.annsummers.com averages a million hits a month. In August 1997 the company's monthly Internet sales stood at a mere $6,100; by last August the figure had climbed to $42,575. Beate Uhse expects online sales www.beate-uhse.com to hit $32.8 million this year...
Beate Uhse is the grandmother of safe sex in Europe, having opened her first sex shop in the northwestern town of Flensburg in 1962. At 79, she still heads the company's board. Unlike those of Ann Summers, only 30% of Beate Uhse sales are to women. "We are working on new concepts to bring more women into the shops, like including more lingerie," explains Ulrich Hulle, chief financial officer...