Great Expectations
Open For Business
In front of a packed cellar of press, suppliers, customers and excited staff, Wim Bos spoke about Mister B’s rise from a single Amsterdam sex shop in 1994 to today’s status as a highly recognised global brand, and his hopes for the company’s future, before picking up scissors and declaring the concession open. He said that it was an honour to be working with Millivres Prowler and continued: “I started the company 17 years ago in the centre of Amsterdam with the plan that the name would one day be known all around the world. The wholesale side, which started much later, has taken the quality we always held dear, and made it available all across Europe and elsewhere. You can see a bottle of Mister B lube from the north of the UK to the south of Europe and that’s how Mister B can grow, and wants to grow. We’re here to grow with Expectations, Millivres Prowler and this shop-in-shop is a good opportunity for us all to grow together. It’s my goal to have a full franchise shop in London and every major city across Europe, and to crack America in a couple more years... I’m looking forward to a great working relationship here, a happy trading relationship. Let us drink to that.” With that the ribbon fell and a cheer went up, before Wim Bos finished: “I hereby declare the Mister B Shop-in-Shop at Expectations officially open and I warmly invite you to look around, to say what you think, to buy and to return to buy again.”
Topham continued: “Mister B have an
extraordinary range of wonderful products and ideally we’ll expand our stock holding up to something around 500 square feet. At the moment we have Expectations leather in that area, which is a great range that complements the Mister B leather, which is
of a higher quality. They really make lovely designs. What we find in the gay market is if you’re into leather, people will happily pay for what they want. If that’s their interest, and it’s all they’re wearing at a club and they want to make that impact, only the best will do. We’ve wanted to introduce really great
“As we were unpacking the
Mister B stock from the boxes and putting it out, people were buying it.”
Linking the main toy area with accessories, clothes and R18 DVDs, it’s impossible to miss the display cases of Mister B branded products and walls of leatherwear and lubes. Holding the key interchange point between the shop’s three subterranean rooms, the 200 square foot area is just a start for the brand inside Expectations, explained Millivres Prowler MD Simon Topham: “The whole Expectations shop is about 2,000 square feet, so we’ve started off in this nice, natural area, with the two doorways into it, and branded it. What we’d like to do, if it works as well as we expect, is to spread sideways into the room.” Topham pointed out the edge of the carpet which currently denotes the extent of the Mister B shop-in-shop and indicated the space beyond, currently used for masks and other accessories.
A three-man tag-team of models - Adam, Petr and Liam with Wim Bos (second left) 49
Erotic Trade Only June 2011
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