Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 125 with Jerry Davies of Balldo

Speaker 1 (0s): This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk, where every week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry, and we discuss what's going on in our business. Plus we give you a tip on buying and selling websites this week. This week we'll be speaking with Jerry Davies of Najers, the makers of Balldo.

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We're offering very limited information at the seller's request. In order to maintain privacy, we anticipate multiple offers for this very rare listing. For more information, contact us on our website@adultsitebroker.com. Now time for this week's interview. My guest today on Adult Site Broker talk is Jerry Davies of nas, the makers of bdo. Jerry, thanks for being with us today on Adult Site Broker talk.

Speaker 2 (2m 15s): It's a pleasure, Bruce. Very glad to be here.

Speaker 1 (2m 18s): Glad to have you. It took us a while.

Speaker 2 (2m 20s): Yeah, well we got here in the end, so yeah, to have this chat

Speaker 1 (2m 25s): Indeed. Me too. Now Jerry is your classic ahead of the game entrepreneur having predicted market trends by setting up the world's first Echo Superstore in Australia in 2007 by doing an electric bike manufacturing company in the UK in 2014. Most recently, he designed NA's first product, Thedo Jerry and his now business partner Elizabeth, saw the massive untapped opportunity with products for men's balls one night while making ball jokes over a bottle of wine.

Must have been a good one to be at. At in 2019. They patented BDO and a whole range of other ball related products. They used crowdfund crowdfunding to fund the bdo with the campaign launching in February, 2021, BDO hit its funding target in 10 hours and went on to sell $105,000 worth of products via Indiegogo. The hilarious launch video of the bdo, and you've gotta see this, it's just God, we'll have you on the floor.

It's cemented its position as a cult icon, particularly in the US where it's received high profile coverage on Howard Stern, cosmopolitan, Vice Wired, and Playboy to name a few. So he was, Jerry was on coward Stern. Now he's really slumming it with me now. Yours is working hard to launch more products, including a new and improved vibrating version of the bald. It will be on the shelves at Christmas time. I'm sorry, Jerry. That's all the time we have for today. So, just kidding.

When did you first realize that you were an entrepreneur?

Speaker 2 (4m 2s): It's, that's the funny one actually, Bruce, because I think, you know, I, I was selling, buying secondhand lawn mowers at the age of about 14 and earning more money than my father by giving him a wipe with an oily rag and selling them on. So technically I kind of should have been classified as an entrepreneur then, but it wasn't, it wasn't until my sort of late thirties that I really thought, Hang on a minute, I've got this pattern of, do a normal job, get bored, come up with an idea, start a business and do that business.

You know? So it took a long while. You know, there was nobody there to tell me, you are an entrepreneur. You know, I just had to sort of figure it out for myself.

Speaker 1 (4m 50s): Sure. Well, nobody ever tells you, you, look, here's the thing, you're either an entrepreneur or you're not. And there are two types of people in this world. There are people who have companies and there are people who work for those companies.

Speaker 2 (5m 6s): Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah. It's, I I, I think what, what I'm trying to say is my, my sort of entrepreneurialism is kind of mixed with being an inventor as well. Right, right. I'm a kind of inventor entrepreneur is probably the, the best way to describe me.

Speaker 1 (5m 25s): And what was your, what was your first invention?

Speaker 2 (5m 28s): What was my first invention? I think I invented a wind turine that fitted underneath the eves of a house when I was about five for a, for a TV show. And I won a prize for it, but it wouldn't have worked. Never would've worked. But he's gotta

Speaker 1 (5m 47s): Go. You invented it. Nobody ever said it had to work.

Speaker 2 (5m 51s): Probably people have invented it right now. There's, I mean, that's one thing you realize about being a sort of inventor is, and entrepreneurs, there's so many people who just launching stuff that's just never gonna work, and they raise some money for it and get some investment, but it doesn't work

Speaker 1 (6m 7s): Well. How about practical? How about practical inventions that did work. What was the first one of those?

Speaker 2 (6m 13s): Oh, the first one that works, I would say it was a, I was working for a major biscuit manufacturer. Cookie manufacturer in US parlance. And there was a particular type of conveyor, which sort of, with these biscuits all over the factory. And I invented this sort of universal guide rail for this conveyor that could be sort of rapidly moved up, down, left right.

And all that sort of stuff. But, you know, I was, I was pretty young. Didn't have any financial backing. I, I tried to patent it. Didn't end up doing it just because the cost, you know? Yeah. But I would say that was my first sort of unique invention. Very, very cool. I, I've actually seen that and been done, you know, maybe 10 years ago somebody sort of did it and commercialized it, so, you

Speaker 1 (7m 16s): Know. Damn damnit. Yeah. That was your invention.

Speaker 2 (7m 19s): I know. But you know, unless you've got a huge pot of money and endless patience with patent writing. Right. You know, it's, you can't just keep pumping out the ideas, you know, you, you have to keep some in your head. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (7m 34s): Inventing things is really an art onto itself, isn't

Speaker 2 (7m 38s): It? Definitely, definitely. And, and, and I think qualification is, is the key skill you have as an inventor. It's just, is what you've come up with a, a product that's actually useful? Is it a, is it a product that's gonna make any money? Is it a product that's gonna maybe be more relevant in the future than it is now? If so, is your patent worthwhile investing in now to wait for something to happen 15 years down the track?

So I think qualification, looking at all the, spreading it all out, doing your research, that that is the skill of being an inventor. I think

Speaker 1 (8m 17s): Just like what you just talked about. Were there other, was there other knowledge that you picked up in your early experiences that you have now that you wished you had back then?

Speaker 2 (8m 28s): Oh my god, Yeah. Well, we, my, my business partner and I back in Australia in the early naughts, we, we set up this eco superstore and one of the things we did was carbon trading. So we were, we were making, we were replacing light globes and in people's houses and fitting solar panels, and we were basically getting a, a carbon credit, which we could then trade on, on the market. Sure. And this business, you know, I went from sort of earning 30 grand a year to earning, you know, 10 million a year within one year.

Wow. And we did that for three years running, so totally wet behind the years, no idea about finances. Just kept thinking, oh, you know, the, the gold's just gonna keep coming year after year and we'll build our dream of Yeah. This being a mainstream brand all around the world. We never had our eye on the books and particularly the, the risks that we're, we were exposed to. And I think, you know, now if I could go back and speak to myself back then, I'd just go, look, this is a p and l, this is a balance sheet.

Look at the size of your payroll bill. Yeah. This is something called forecasting. What happens if sort of modeling. Yeah. And, and I think the other thing was, you know, don't trust your bloody accountants. You need, you need to check what they've done and Right. You know, forensically analyze, you know, what they're advising you and maybe take second and third opinions because Sure. You know, we, we just employed, you know, some reasonably high tier accountants who just charged us an absolute fortune and didn't really give us any, Don't do this, don't do that.

So yeah, that was the single biggest hole in my early experience, was just the financial understanding, I think. And it's such a shame because there was a lot of money in that business. A lot of money.

Speaker 1 (10m 39s): I bet. So tell us how you came up with the idea of the boulder.

Speaker 2 (10m 44s): Yeah, so, so the, the wine and the, as discussed in the sort of the, the preamble was kind of like the, the culmination of the qualification period. So I, you know, I'm, I'm a kinky bastard and I, I like, so I, I like, I like sort of experimenting a bit and I act, it's a funny story of this. So I, I, I went on a friend of mine's stag, do, I dunno if you call it aag do in the US us you know, what's that bugs party before you get married?

Speaker 1 (11m 24s): Oh, you're talking about a bachelor party.

Speaker 2 (11m 26s): Bachelor party. There you go.

Speaker 1 (11m 29s): Great movie.

Speaker 2 (11m 31s): I've never seen that. I've never seen that. I must watch it. We, my God.

Speaker 1 (11m 36s): Yes, you must. It's a classic.

Speaker 2 (11m 39s): We did this thing called oceaneering. I dunno if you've ever heard of that. It's ba basically you, you, you clamber along rocks on the, on the coastline on a cliff, and then you just jump in off those rocks into the ocean.

Speaker 1 (11m 50s): So I mean, what could go wrong? Right.

Speaker 2 (11m 52s): Well, here's what went wrong. So I was wearing some non appropriate underwear, shall we say, or, you know, I wasn't wearing my speedo, which kept my, my nuts tightly fast into my body. So I, I jumped off this rock and I ended up, as we say in the UK dropping a ball, you know, dropping a bullock and shit. And I, I came out and like, my balls were just sort of feeling a bit weird and I looked, and one of them was just much lower than the other.

And I thought, Oh no, what's going on here? And took some advice from the, the doctor and he said, Oh, you've, you've gotta be very careful here because you know, you've, you've effectively stretched your, your, your tubes going to your, your testes. And no, I was like, No,

Speaker 1 (12m 47s): Making me hurt, just hearing about it.

Speaker 2 (12m 50s): But, but the weird thing was, I, I thought, well, hang on a minute. This, when I, when I pulled down on my ballsack with my thumb, my four four finger, they feel okay. They feel right. So I bought myself one of these stainless steel ball weights, ball stretches, and I wore that for a bit and the problem went away. It's just kind of like, put them in the right place and stopped them feeling like they were sort of loose, you know, rolling around in the trunk of the car.

Well,

Speaker 1 (13m 23s): That's good to hear.

Speaker 2 (13m 24s): Yeah. So I, I managed to sort of cure myself just by sort of reorganizing my ball, shall we say. And then I thought, well, hang on a minute. This, this is actually quite a nice sensation. I like this. You know, people, people have been doing this for years. It's, it's way, way popular in, in the, in the gay community. Oh yeah. And I thought, well, what about if I, you know, add a bit more weight to, to this and, you know, how much can the balls take? And I was sort of pleasantly surprised and, and this is it.

I'm not, and I'm not an extreme person in this sense at all. You know, I won't do, I'm not into pain and stuff like that in, in the bedroom. It was just more sort of a mild sort of edging sort of sensation. So yeah, the ball, I figured out the boards could actually really take quite a lot of, a lot of weight. I've, I found out that they could, they feel they felt a lot happier being sort of cupped or held in a position.

And I've always had really sort of sensitive boards. I don't, I don't like people licking them or poking them or fondling them. I like them to be sort of slightly tugged, bit of a, just think of that thumb and forefinger around the top pulling down a little bit. That is the sort of optimum position for the, the balls. So yeah, we, being engineers that we are having a 3D printer, we, we made some early prototypes of, you know, a kind of ball cage that sort of organized the balls.

And the idea originally was it would be a sort of edging device and a tugging device. And then we thought, well, geez, actually you could put these inside somebody, you know, and that's where we sort of put the, the tip on the front and we had to invent a, a compressible, a non-compressible cord that actually was expandable in, in one plane. So you could get the, the balls in the top and hey ho, that first BS sex experience was had and it, and it was good.

So

Speaker 1 (15m 37s): I'll take your word for it.

Speaker 2 (15m 38s): Well, this is it, you know, there's, you know, like you were saying earlier, there's the people who work for people and the people who own companies. I think it's the same with boss. Absolutely. The same with boss. You have the people who you going in my balls, I'll punch you in the face and then you have to do what you like with my balls. I love it. You know, there's, there's those two camps and what I figured out is if you tell the, the, the guys who wanna run a mile, when you mention anything about balls, to just cut their balls and just do what I said, just tuck down a little bit, they go, Oh yeah, that's, that's nice.

I like that my boss feel safe. So it's, it's a case of convincing those, those people that you know, you're gonna be alright if you wear a border or, or anything like that. Right.

Speaker 1 (16m 24s): Yeah. I think it's definitely a bit of a paradigm shift and yeah, I mean my, my initial impression is Hmm. Balls, huh. But hey, you know, I I, I know that from everything you and I have talked about, it's, it's something that can be very useful. Tell us what steps you took to patent the idea and what is actually protected by the patent.

Speaker 2 (16m 54s): Yeah. Well, I, I can tell you that because it's patented. Yes. And, you know, there's all this sort of stuff about, oh, you must have an NDA before you talk to people. Well, you know, a patent's the best NDA in the world in, in

Speaker 1 (17m 6s): My view.

Speaker 2 (17m 7s): Yes, it is. I I have been advised as such. So yeah, the, the steps to patent were basically prototype, prototype, prototype, record all your prototypes, record all of the possibilities, all of the connections, all of the,

Speaker 1 (17m 22s): Yeah. When you say, when you, when you say record, what do you mean?

Speaker 2 (17m 27s): Document? Just, just, just, it's almost like you're keeping a, a journal of of what you've done. All the different things that, you know, work didn't work because when you pattern something, you can, you can record all of those Yes.

Speaker 1 (17m 44s): And include them.

Speaker 2 (17m 45s): Include them. Yeah. Sorry, include, And the only thing stopping you from including all of those options that you've explored is that it might conflict with some, but somebody else's patent, somebody else's prior art. So, Sure. In the case of Bordo, we, I think we've got over 35 pages of variance of the Bordeaux and ball cages that, you know, allow attachments, either tips for penetrations or tugs or vibrations and, and all of the attachment mechanisms possible.

So it's a very robust, encompassing patent. Yeah. In terms of the steps of doing it, we, we've got the UK patent first, and then by doing so, you get a, a grace period sort of internationally where you can then file some something called the, the P C T, which is the, it's kind of like the International Patent Convention Treaty. What that, once you file that, that then gives you two years of protection internationally to give you time to then file in each of those nations.

So as a result of doing well over the last two years since we filed the P ct, we have chosen the markets that we, we think, you know, we wanna secure and we've filed individual local patents in those areas. Right. I mean, unless you've got half a mill in the bank and you wanna throw that at patenting in every single country in the world. Yeah. You know, you've gotta look at where the value is, so

Speaker 1 (19m 36s): Right. You pick your best markets.

Speaker 2 (19m 37s): Exactly. Exactly. So that's what's been done, and here we are. And now, you know, by virtue of having this, this patent, we've got 20 years of exclusivity on, on the BDO design effectively. And nice. And I, and I think, you know, because I am prone to coming up with things a little before, they're actually sort of, I would say, sort of, you know, the norm in a market or, or just a standard sort of product.

I, I think our, our, you know, our sort of our our day is, is yet to come, You know, we've had a good sort of early success, but really, I, I think balls will be a commonplace thing in all adult stores. There'll be a ball section, there'll be categories in eCommerce sites, and I think we're still probably three to five years away from that. But, you know, as I said earlier, that was all part of the qualification. You know, how long is it gonna take for this to really sort of go off?

Sure. And where's our value in the patent?

Speaker 1 (20m 44s): Right. So what other IP did you have, have, or do you have?

Speaker 2 (20m 49s): So obviously you've got the, the, the brand bdo, well the name Bordo. So that's, that's trademarked internationally as well. That's kind of key because we had, we had a great success with our sort of launch campaign. Yes. And as you said earlier, the, the, the video was a cartoon. We produced kind of

Speaker 1 (21m 12s): Fabulous

Speaker 2 (21m 13s): South parking and style, huge amount of hits, lot of traffic coming from that. And hence, you know, BDOs became this sort of cult comedic kind of thing on a lot of the comedy sites. Right. And again, I still don't think that's, that's gone anywhere near to its sort of true potential. It's, it's kind of got this cult status and, and I think B bordo ends up being a word like dildo, bordo, vibrator, you know, it's, it's a b ddo, so there's not a lot of products out there that can just be classified by that, by a single word.

True. And instantly recognize. So again, in that three to five years scenario, Bordeaux, I don't wanna say it's a house old name because it's not a household name, but to, to all of us grownups, we'll know what a BDO is. Exactly. And that's our, our brand. It's our, it's our, it reflects our ip, it's our domain name, you know, it's, yeah. It's, it's like having a website called dildo.com, you know, I guess

Speaker 1 (22m 23s): Gonna look that up. So how, how did you go about setting up a crowdfunding campaign?

Speaker 2 (22m 29s): That was great fun actually. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone just, just to do for a, a product of any kind. It's, it's, it requires a lot of massaging of supporters finding your supporters. And again, we were very, I don't wanna say lucky, I think we planned well in doing the, the, the sort of comedic launch video because that got us up absolutely six to 10,000 subscriber base.

Just, just like that, you know, literally we had those signups in two or three days, pretty much was, it was crazy. So by having that many people pay, you know, paying attention when you launched a campaign, you know, they, they subscribed and, and within 10 hours we got our, our campaign target. But it was, it was, it was a lot of, a lot of tweaking, a lot of sort of, you know, sort of pre-launch PR interviews, things like that.

And that, that was tricky actually, because we had to send out kind of homemade samples to radio shows, to TV to podcasts. And these were, you know, it wasn't ideal sending out a sort of handmades, These were hand poured BDOs that we made in my garage downstairs in, in a 3D printed mold. They worked, but, but they didn't look anywhere near as pretty as the, the finished product. So. Right. Yeah. It's a little bit iffy on the initial impressions, but Right.

We got there in the end.

Speaker 1 (24m 12s): That's excellent. So how about marketing? How did you go about that?

Speaker 2 (24m 16s): Well, there we go again. So it, again, we thought, well, we need to kind of soften this a little bit. You know, if if we, if we, the, the people we were speaking to early on when we first started to sort of connect with the adult industry going, Oh, that's very niche. You know, it's a chastity device, it's a, it's, it's a BDSM device, It's, it's gotta be a long while before this becomes a mainstream thing. So we thought, well, we, we need to soften this, so, so let's, let's look at a way that we can make this fun.

And one of the things that sort of really, really put us on the right track was, I dunno if you remember in the first Jurassic Park, the, the video, and they all sit in the theater and you've got burg there doing the, the talk through with the DNA that they find in the, in the mosquito, in the amber, that, that sort of simplification in a cartoon format that got us thinking. We're like, Yeah, why don't we do this? Why don't we have a talking pair of balls?

And let's just sort of

Speaker 1 (25m 20s): Makes me laugh every time I think about it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25m 23s): Let's, let's do this as a sort of public information film, you know, a bit bit duck and cover if, if you like. We, we were a hundred percent on the money with that because what it did was give us instantly the mainstream market. Yeah. We had total turnaround of expectations. You know, we are having, we have, I think it's even gone up, like last time I checked, I think we had like 35% women buying the product. We can clearly see that it's, it's a main mainstream sort of buyers.

I'd say only about 20% are actually niche or a hardcore chastity, bdsm, that sort of stuff. So we've, we've, we've done the right thing. We've got it into mainstream where, you know, the bulk of the market is, so I think we go ourselves a pat on the back for the marketing.

Speaker 1 (26m 14s): Yeah. You know, I mean, you talk about the industry's reaction and I can't tell you how many times I've seen it in all my years in the industry where someone comes in from the outside with something different and everybody with, with their tunnel vision in fine form goes, Oh no, it'll never work. No, it'll never work. It's, it's, it's very niche. It's very niche. It'll never work. But, and, and a lot of times the people are turned away and it doesn't work.

But I, I love what you've done and like you said, the mainstream has adopted it, they've been receptive to it, and the mainstream is where you're gonna make most of your money.

Speaker 2 (26m 59s): Absolutely. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think, Go ahead. We, we, we, we had, and just to sort of, you know, back up what you're saying there, we had in, you know, joining the Ex BS community and, and just sort of chatting to people on the, the forums there, having sort of early meetings on Covid, you know, some sort of quite senior figures in the industry were like, you know, I, I've thought I've seen it or I thought I've seen it, or, and, and

Speaker 1 (27m 29s): What I thought

Speaker 2 (27m 30s): Completely surprised us that this is actually possible and it's a, a thing and it's enjoyable. So yeah, we, we kind of, you know, really sort of, I, I think that really sort of stuck home with us that, you know, we, we'd come up with something new and, and people were just receptive to it as well.

Speaker 1 (27m 54s): The way I'm different, the way I'm different from others in the industry is it's not only my nature, but it's my job to be open-minded. And when something comes along, I'm like, Oh, that's cool. Let's look into this. As opposed to, Oh, that'll never work. Yeah. I've seen so many people make so much money with those that'll never works. That, Yeah, not, sorry, I don't think that way. So who is Chuck the balls?

Speaker 2 (28m 19s): Ah, this is the, the little, Yeah. I forgot to mention he's the, the little ball character that we, we used in the, the sort of viral campaign. Yeah. We just wanted to sort of, again, as I said, soften the, the approach to this by making this sort of making balls. I, I think, I think people think find balls funny. People don't find penises funny or vaginas funny or ass is maybe ass is up there with balls, but balls are funny.

Yeah. And when you, when you characterize the balls, and this is what we did with Chuck the balls, or Chuck as he is better known, people really sort of like

Speaker 1 (29m 1s): Char,

Speaker 2 (29m 2s): I don't wanna say, I don't wanna, I don't wanna say grabbed hold of it, but I will, they kind of really grabbed hold of that. That's good. Yeah. So it just felt right that we give balls a face and two arms and a mouth.

Speaker 1 (29m 18s): I, I love it.

Speaker 2 (29m 20s): It was lockdown, it was Bruce, what did, everyone, everyone went a bit crazy,

Speaker 1 (29m 26s): If that's the truth. That kinda leads me into my next question. What were your experiences trying to launch a product? Obviously you did it successfully, but during Covid

Speaker 2 (29m 37s): It was damn hard. It was really hard, very stressful because all, all the usual processes just had collapsed, number one, finding suppliers. Yeah. Normally you'd go and visit three factories, you know, and, and I've never, I've never been to China. I've, I've always just done it through sort of web meetings, email, that sort of stuff. But in this case, we really needed, because it was our product that we were manufacturing rather than buying Chinese products off a Chinese factory, we really wanted to just go and get that.

So couldn't do that. We thought about making it ourselves, you know, how can we do that here in the UK with all the problems with Brexit and import export and shipping

Speaker 1 (30m 30s): And the expenses.

Speaker 2 (30m 32s): It's, it, it was just no, just don't do it at all. So, Sure. We ended up having to go with, with an agent, manufacturing agent who obviously sort of took their slice of the Yeah. And, and it was also quite difficult because we're, you know, engineers talking through sales people to engineers in the factory and, and the, the messages not getting passed on correctly and us not receiving or us receiving a sort of diluted version of what the engineer in the factory has said back about manufacturing issues.

So plus

Speaker 1 (31m 15s): It was really, plus they're, plus they're Chinese, so that didn't help.

Speaker 2 (31m 18s): Well, you know, I I, to be honest, I, I find working with the Chinese factories, you know, there's a style isn't there? And, and you, you, once you know how to communicate with them what Yeah. How they do things and when no means no from them. Right. You know, that's when it's all okay. Right. That was sort of missing in this, in this, this conversation. And, and it was, it was very stressful, you know, especially when we had deadlines.

We had all these people who paid money up front through crowd funding campaign, like, Right, where's my product? Where's my product? Why haven't I got my product? Sure. Well it's, it's, it's a pandemic and things are all collapsing around the world. So that's number one why you're three months late on getting it. Yeah. But yeah, it was, it was hard. So, so there was that, there was the, we ideally wanted some money. We, we had, we, we wanted to launch a brand, not just a single product. So we had, you know, it's very clear that we had other products that we wanted to bring to market.

So we were looking for an investor from the outset just before the pandemic. We were having some, you know, positive conversations with a number of parties and, and then they just finished as soon as the pandemic came out because why wouldn't you just wanna sit there, there and guard your chips with your arms and wait until the storm's blown over? Yeah. So we had to just, we just had to go ahead with the crowd funding only and, you know, thank god it worked. Yeah. I think, I think the other thing that was the, was the biggest problem for us was shipping.

Shipping just became an, an absolute nightmare. Yeah. In terms of cost and also in terms of delays. So we ended up having to air freight our first shipment to oh Lord,

Speaker 1 (33m 16s): The

Speaker 2 (33m 17s): US which, you know, instead of being pennies per unit was dollars per unit. And you know, we're talking quite a lot of dollars per unit, so that sort of sucked a lot of profit out of the early sales or, you know, we're still still paying for that right now because you know, that that stock is still being munched through and it was air freighted that the, the worst point in, in the, the pandemic because if we didn't do that, we would've missed the start of the, you know, the sort of season as it were.

So yeah. That, that was a big problem. And, and I think also having to do virtual trade shows, you know, yourself seeing people face to face, Oh,

Speaker 1 (33m 59s): He's talked over, I hate virtual shows. I I won't do 'em anymore.

Speaker 2 (34m 2s): Well, we, I don't, I don't think anyone will, to be honest with you. They're, we're, we're, we are free again now, aren't we? But

Speaker 1 (34m 10s): It was kinda,

Speaker 2 (34m 12s): Well, yes, you're right. It depends where you lived, doesn't it? Yeah. I think we've forgotten all about it here in the UK now, just get reminded every time we go to other countries when they ask us to fill in forms and wear masks and stuff. So it's, Yeah. It, it's, I I think in person events, that's where you build those trusts, get those business relationships and Oh yeah. You know, it's, it's, we spend a lot of money on virtual shows where yeah,

Speaker 1 (34m 42s): You can't, you can't simulate that. You just can't simulate that. No, doesn't, doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (34m 47s): You can't cut the deals as well. You know, it's, it's, you gotta have that beer with somebody afterwards or that, you know, that little chat. That's what cements in the deal.

Speaker 1 (34m 59s): Sure. So talk about the market reception of the bald.

Speaker 2 (35m 4s): Yeah, I, I think I sort of touched on it before we, we sort of turned all the expectations around in making it a mainstream product. It's been picked up by the mainstream sort of press as well. So, you know, we've had appearances in Cosmopolitan, Wired magazine and, you know, foreign language media as well, quite a bit of stuff sort of coming through in Germany now. And it's, it's all mainstream stuff because it was, it was, it's so newsworthy.

It's like, did you know, know that you can use your balls for penetration and Yeah. It's not a kinky thing. It's, it's just something you can actually do. So why not? Why not try it? Exactly. So we, yeah, we just got that sort of reception and that word of mouth sort of passing on, you know, guys and girls in the bar going, Hey, did you hear about the bordo? You know, it's, it's that type of rollout that we're, we're experiencing. Sure.

Very much the opposite of the, the niche that was predicted.

Speaker 1 (36m 11s): Exactly. Thank you, Chuck. So tell me about your international customer base.

Speaker 2 (36m 17s): Yeah, I mean it's, it's a little bit tricky. We we're basically a US company. Americans love balls. Americans find balls, funny. Americans love trying new sex toys. That's our experience. So our, our customer base is 92% usa. Oh wow.

Speaker 1 (36m 41s): That's a lot of potential internationally.

Speaker 2 (36m 44s): Yeah. Yeah. So, so internationally, you know, we, we think the sort of, the other markets are only just starting to wake up, you know, we've just, Germany we assume would be, you know, right up there with, with the us but

Speaker 1 (37m 0s): Japan,

Speaker 2 (37m 2s): Japan will, will, will come to later, but yeah, there's a bit of a complexity there. Well, so

Speaker 1 (37m 9s): Let's talk about, let's talk about that. What, what markets have been been a struggle so far, and why do you think so?

Speaker 2 (37m 14s): Yeah, Japan has been one. Yes. I, and I think, I think it's a one of anatomy basically. And maybe there's, you know, we've, we've had that kind of feedback from a couple of potential distributors there where, you know, they've said, Look, look, we just not sure whether this is gonna work for Japanese guys and girls.

Speaker 1 (37m 40s): They, they're known, they, the Japanese guys are supposed to be the smallest in the world.

Speaker 2 (37m 45s): Yeah. Well, I dunno about balls. There's not enough ball data out out there.

Speaker 1 (37m 50s): No, I just know about, I just know about penises. I guess we have to take a survey of balls, but you gotta kind of figure one will one will kind of follow the other.

Speaker 2 (37m 60s): Yeah, I'd, I'd assume so. And, and also I think if that's the case, then the, the partner is not likely to be expecting anything as big as the bdo, which is two inches in diameters. So Yeah. You know, maybe that's why maybe

Speaker 1 (38m 15s): You don't wanna stretch those poor Asian girls out.

Speaker 2 (38m 18s): Oh no. Yeah. Well, we won't go into the noises they make off the videos, but my girlfriend does a good impression.

Speaker 1 (38m 27s): Oh, I like that. We should have had her on.

Speaker 2 (38m 31s): That's

Speaker 1 (38m 32s): Pretty much it.

Speaker 2 (38m 35s): Yeah. But I, I, it's so annoying because I really, really wanted a Japanese market to take it up because I, I see the Japanese, I've spent a lot of time hanging out with Japanese people. I love them. I think they've got the same sense of humor that, you know, we do in the UK and in the US as well. And it, it's that kind of comedic thing with a cartoon character as well, just kind of, it it should, it should fly there, Bruce, I think. And, and I think maybe it's just a comms thing, which we need to sort of, you know, invest a little more money into further down the track.

Speaker 1 (39m 11s): Maybe you should do a Japanese version of Chuck, Chuck son.

Speaker 2 (39m 16s): Yes. Chuck son with his, Yes. His his little on, Yeah. And his kimona

Speaker 1 (39m 24s): Eating sushi. Oh man, I think we got a script. The

Speaker 2 (39m 28s): Stereotypes everywhere aren't

Speaker 1 (39m 32s): Terrible.

Speaker 2 (39m 32s): Yeah. Well, yeah, so Japan, I think other markets that, that have been a struggle, Israel's been a real problem too. We've had a lot of interest. I know, Well we had a lot of interest from, from Israeli customers through the crowdfunding campaign, and we had a big problem with shipping to them. And I think it's the, the, the alphabet issue. It just, things are just getting completely lost and trying to find them.

Yeah. Just absolute failure and the cost of upgrading that shipping to Israeli customers to, you know, FedEx, DHL was just like triple the value of the product in some cases. So, you know, maybe, well the logical thing to do was get an Israeli distributor and we, we explored two or three, didn't really get anywhere with them. And you know, I, I find that a bit annoying because there was definitely quite a strong appetite from the Israeli market.

You know, we've got a good, good signal from them. I, I would say confidently they're in the top, the top five nationalities who were initially looking up wanting to buy the product. So interesting. Again, we need to do some more work there and you know, it's just time and getting it right. I think.

Speaker 1 (41m 0s): So what's your impression so far of the adult market?

Speaker 2 (41m 4s): I love it. It's number one. I really like the people. We went to the Xbi retreat in Miami. That's our first actual face to face show, even though it's not a true sort of, you know, d to C show. It's a B2B retreat, but everyone's really nice, very helpful. Kind of like a small, small community, but a but a strong community and yeah, I, I've had a ton of advice of some great people and I'm, I'm very thankful for that.

Speaker 1 (41m 39s): Sure, sure. Now how do you see, we talked a little bit about this earlier. How do you see the market for ball related products growing?

Speaker 2 (41m 50s): You're asking, I think you, maybe you might need an independent on that, but from, from my angle?

Speaker 1 (41m 58s): Oh, you mean you're, you're slightly prejudiced. Is that what you're

Speaker 2 (42m 0s): Trying to say? I might be a little, yeah.

Speaker 1 (42m 2s): Maybe a tad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42m 3s): But one thing I am really pushing for in industry is to have the category of balls ball related products. Because if you look on any eCommerce store, you try and find something for balls, it's under coing.

Speaker 1 (42m 21s): Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42m 22s): It's not a coching, it's for balls. You know, it's, you know, there's, there's specific products for balls, not, not just the BDO or, or any of the BDOs brothers and sisters when they come online. There's a whole ton of products out there that are ball specific. Right. So why isn't there that balls category on an e-commerce, Why is maybe,

Speaker 1 (42m 42s): Maybe BDO will change then?

Speaker 2 (42m 44s): Well, I'm, I'm, I, I think I've already got a couple of e-commerce sites to create a balls category and dropped in a whole bunch of other complimentary products or well say complementary, I mean other ball products in there. Right. You know, lubes, ball stretches, you know, that type of thing. And the, the feedback we've had is that it's working, you know, they're getting good sort of sales through by by doing that. So I would say, I would say in three to five, I your, all of your e-commerce will have a, a ball section

Speaker 1 (43m 21s): That'll certainly help.

Speaker 2 (43m 23s): Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and people, a lot of the feedback we've had from, you know, I was talking earlier about this sort of industry veterans saying, Look, I've thought I'd seen it all, you know, well this whole new sort of, we've unlocked the door to balls as a main, as something that needs to be recognized as a, as a thing of that can be stimulated as a thing that can often make up for poor performance or medical issues.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43m 53s): Talk, talk a little bit about that. Would you please, Jerry? Yeah, sure. Because, because that is a real appeal for, for men who have have erectile dysfunction, right?

Speaker 2 (44m 4s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean I'm, I'll just sort of flag here straight away that I'm, I'm not a medical profession, so I, I can't, I can't sort of categorically say it's great for Ed, but what I do know is, you know, and, and bizarrely enough, I actually had Ed for about six months during covid when I got a prostatitis infection, which really knock seven shades of shit out of me. I, I couldn't get it up. I could, I could only get like half, half a wreck at the, at best.

I just didn't have that feeling there that, you know, you have when you get that, you know when you want to go. Yeah. And having, using the bdo, I was still able to sort of pleasure my partner with a, a good girth. I could get the sensation of the stimulation of the, the sort of nerve endings in my balls probably made my cock about as a wrecked as I could get it at the time. It's kind of like having your, your, your baller.

It, it's, it's a key trigger. It's, it's a key trigger to sort of maximize the potential. And I think for, for, for guys that suffer from Ed or, you know, my experience, you, I think you spend about two or three months going, Ah, yeah, it'll come back soon. It'll come back soon. It'll come back soon. And then it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (45m 25s): Wishful thinking, Sure.

Speaker 2 (45m 27s): Oh my god, you know what's, and then the embarrassment starts setting in and the self sort of criticisms and, and you know Sure. The depression sets in about it and the desperation. Yeah. And I think with, with having something like the BDO and still being able to make your wife come or your partner come give them good girth, have, have that sensation, that stimulation and not feel like you're tying a strap on around and fucking your partner with your stomach, you know, it's, it's, it's down there.

It's where it's meant to be. And

Speaker 1 (46m 6s): By the way, what about, what about the gay market? Have you considered that?

Speaker 2 (46m 11s): Yeah, yeah. I mean, again, that was, that was another sort of thing that we assumed would be the number one source of interest and customer. I think that's still yet to happen. I think we haven't really sort of reached the sort of penetration, so to speak, so to speak. I'm, I'm immune to these innuendos now. Bruce

Speaker 1 (46m 36s): Can't imagine

Speaker 2 (46m 37s): Should be too

Speaker 1 (46m 38s): Outta meetings. They just go, Oh, they just roll right off my tongue too, Jerry, all day, all night

Speaker 2 (46m 45s): To the wall, all of that stuff. Yeah. So I, I think, I think half of it is gay is very much, they will have tried an awful lot of this stuff before by, with whatever means they can, you know, whether it's coch rings or tying a pair of underwear around the top or, you know, leathers sort of support. It's, it's largely been sort of already done, but I think they're then I, I don't think that market has woken up to it yet.

Sure. And you know that I know a lot of gay people and you know, my one good friend, he's like, Look, we are the dirtiest bastards in the world. We will try anything. We, we, we we want to go. They will talk about the new thing. And that is how I get my cool points in, in the group. You know, again, I'm sort of surprised. I think it's a marketing thing. I think we just need to sort of uplift our game a bit in that sector.

Speaker 1 (47m 51s): Maybe you need a, maybe you need a gay chuck.

Speaker 2 (47m 54s): Yeah, could too. Yeah, that would be interesting.

Speaker 1 (47m 58s): Okay. Or Chuck's brother. Chuck's brother.

Speaker 2 (47m 60s): Yeah. Chuck's gay half Billy.

Speaker 1 (48m 2s): Billy Balls.

Speaker 2 (48m 3s): Yeah, Billy Balls. So I'll, I'll think of it. It'll

Speaker 1 (48m 6s): Probably, I won't charge you for that. I won't, I won't charge, I won't charge you for the mark. My marketing genius. So what are your, He laughs So what are your plans for the progression of the NAS brand and the bdo and what new products are you gonna be launching

Speaker 2 (48m 22s): Soon? First things first, BDO is, you know, version one of Right. The board out. So, you know, we've had our sort of initial, and that's, that's another thing that was really hard in lockdown was getting testing groups, getting people together, finding sort of testers being, and again, being able to make the samples to send to them and get the materials, blah, blah, blah. It was, it was tough. Yeah. So, you know, we, we've, we've now had over, I don't know, maybe 9,000 people officially test it for us by buying the product.

You've got a lot of feedback from, from those groups. We had some sort of, again, I was talking earlier about the size of boss and how guys just don't know what, what size their balls are. And you've got guys who've got absolutely gigantic balls who just think they, they don't think about it. They're just like, I've got balls. That's it. You know, it's maybe only a partner that ever sees them. And what if that partner's never seen another man? What if they don't really watch porn that much?

You know, you just don't know how, how big or small you are. So we had some sort of feedback with guys with big nuts that, you know, it was, it was a little hard to get on with them, for them. So what we're looking at is a, a product where you kind of, you know, separate the upper ring so that you can, you don't have stretch it over your balls. Cool. We've got some sort of more design coming into the, the, the, the tip a little more on the tickling sort of front for, you know, the ladies.

And we've got a, a vibe that's in, in the pipeline as well. So that's basically a vibrating version. We've had a lot of requests be

Speaker 1 (50m 13s): Popular.

Speaker 2 (50m 13s): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that, that one's sort of nearing design completion. And then we got a whole bunch of other, other products. So BDOs sort of really the one that Bordo was the one we sort of knew would probably get the most news and that's why we launched it first. Right. But we've got another two or three products that are equally as sort of out there and different and good as the bdo, which, which we need to bring to market as well.

Great. So again, it's all time, money, team resources, all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 (50m 50s): Absolutely. Well Jerry, I'd like to thank you for being our guest today on Adult Site Broker talk, and I hope we'll get a chance to do this again soon.

Speaker 2 (50m 59s): Thank you very much, Bruce. It was, it was good fun. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (51m 2s): My pleasure. My broker tip today is part one on how to buy a website. The first question to ask yourself is what kind of site would you like to buy? Would you like a Tube site, a cam site, a dating site, a membership site, a social media site, or something else? If you wanna buy a membership site, what type of site do you want and what niche There are literally hundreds of niches and many sub niches. For instance, let's say you wanna buy a gay site under gay, there's bears are mature, bareback Asian, Latino, amateur, bi black, euro and fetish, along with many sub fetishes plus there's hardcore jocks, porn stars, solo trans twinks and uniforms straight has even more subes.

I can't tell you how many people contact me and just say, I wanna buy a site or I wanna buy a pay site. I need more information than that. How you make this decision should be based on these factors. What interests you, what you enjoy should definitely play a part in what you buy. If you like men and wanna make money on a straight site, that's probably a really bad idea. Same thing if you're straight and wanna buy a gay site. So what you like plays a part. What's your budget? This is something you need to establish at the very beginning.

Not only do you need to know what it is you're working with, but some classifications of sites are more expensive than others. For instance, if you want a Cam site with any traffic or revenue at all, you're gonna need a lot of money. In fact, to buy any established and successful site will be somewhat expensive. If you buy a site that's pretty much just a platform without traffic or sales, you're gonna need a huge investment to build it up. In that case, it might actually be as good or better just to start your own site. That way you get exactly what it is you're looking for.

We'll talk about this subject more next week and next week we'll be speaking with Karl Edwards of Stiff Media. And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker talk. I'd once again like to thank my guest, Jerry Davies of Balldo. Talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.