Talking With Brittany Wilson, Sales and Marketing Director for The Dungeon Store

The Dungeon Store is a woman-owned, intergenerational family business, priding itself on over two decades of curating collections of fine BDSM and fetish toys with an eye towards community care and development. The company’s Sales and Marketing Director, Brittany Wilson, is the daughter of the woman who began the business, and she has been selling toys to the BDSM community for over a decade.

I know you recently debuted “Badger Blades.” Can you tell us what these are exactly?

Badger Blades are our take on a big conductive talon. They're designed to look like big, badass blades protruding from your knuckles. So, you'd line the "blade" part between your fingers, wrapping your fingers around the base for control. They're very eye-catching and pack a good shock.

Does Dungeon Store presently have a best-selling toy?

I don't know that I would say we have one toy that is our best seller. I would definitely say that violet wand accessories are our flagship product line, and they continue to be our most successful product line.

Following, in the two decades of providing BDSM toys, what trends have you seen come and go?

EVERYTHING! Truly, everything in this industry moves in cycles. Right now, canes and rods are in their down swing, while paddles and toys made of atypical or recycled materials is on an upswing. A few years back, it was crops. Everyone in the world wanted crops, so every vendor carried them. I remember when "50 Shades of Grey" came out. Bondage with anything that wasn't a leather cuff was all the rage. But I look at it like a wheel. It will always turn again. What was old and outdated will become new and sought after again.

Do you find that when traveling to conventions or even just talking to customers not in your store’s immediate area, that shoppers’ needs vary from location to location, that maybe geographical location dictates what kind of toys people buy?

Oh absolutely! Every region is completely different and looks for different things. This is especially influenced if someone in an area is an expert on something. So, like, in New England and the Bay Area, you have a lot of rope experts. So, those regions are exposed to Shibari more often and have a higher-than-average interest in rope. Same thing for my region, and violet wands or Pennsylvania and single tails. If there's an expert or vendor of a particular thing local to a community, that community tends to know more and seek more of whatever that particular product is.

How did you personally get into selling adult products?

I'm second-generation here. Mom founded this business 25 years ago, and I got into it about 13 years ago. So for me, it ain't nothing but a family thing.

What is the non-kinkster getting wrong about kink?

The internet is truly an amazing tool for gaining knowledge and building connections across great distances… But almost everything someone learns from a smut book or from a "Tik Tok Dom" is likely to be inaccurate in the name of narrative. And it's really easy to tell people who come into Kink with a lot of predispositions and opinions formed by fantasy books and online characters. The best way to join this community is with an open mind. We're friendly and want to share our world with anyone who's interested. Just don't believe everything you read.

Have you tried all the toys the Dungeon Store carries…or at least the ones you wanted to try?

That's really personal. Let's just say all products have been tried by a member of our staff. Not everything we carry is going to be one of our team's preferred fetishes, but we've tested everything we stock. The books are also a curated collection, as we've read and recommended all the titles in our shop.

What does a woman-owned adult toy store offer that a store owned by women and men or just men not have?

It's about the relationships with our customers. We have a very diverse customer base. Many are comfortable talking to us. And BDSM isn't just our work; this is our lifestyle and community. They seek us out because we've been around for 25 years and we are known, as vendors, as friends, as presenters and members of the community. We know a lot of people at the shows. When they have a question, they know they can trust us with a straightforward answer.

Beyond ‘Badger Blades,” what’s coming in the future for the Dungeon Store?

We're working to reveal several entire new product lines in the next year. Some will be conductive and some won't be. The earliest should be fit to print, so to speak, in October. So, stay tuned.

Find The Dungeon Store here: https://thedungeonstore.com

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