LATEX 101: MAY COVER STORY

Richard tells how Kay Arnold, “the big head honcho” at Boutique Bizarre, dropped in on the Latex 101 stand but left without ordering anything.

“But two days later, out drops the biggest wholesale order we’d ever had — five grand. And that was really when we realised there were three threads to what we were doing: the website, the fairs and now the wholesale side.”

Richard admits that, like many latex start-ups, Latex 101’s retail pricing didn’t initially allow much headroom for wholesale discounts. “But we’ve gradually crept some of the costs up as the market has increased some of their costs,” he explains. 

“We were always one of the cheaper ones on retail prices, but not the cheapest. But our wholesale prices are pretty aggressive by the standards of the industry.” 

“By spring 2016, when the firm added its 3D body scanning equipment to the consignment of items destined for Berlin and the German Fetish Fair, Latex 101 had expanded to become ten people. 

Now, in 2018, there are 12 or 13, depending on when you’re reading this. Which mean that by fetish standards, Latex 101 is now pretty big.

“By fetish standards it’s huge,” Richard agrees. What’s more, he adds, “After talking to industry people in Berlin, I think we now make more pieces of latex in the UK than anyone else.”

MARBLED AND TEXTURED BECOME ‘A LATEX 101 THING’

As mentioned near the top of this story, the decisions to order in a bunch of Yummy Gummy bespoke latex and to invest in a laser cutter were both made in the same year.

“Having started out because we wanted men to wear more colour,” Richard explains, “we were instantly interested in what Rebecca at Yummy Gummy had to offer when she first popped on the scene.”

“We have a rule: never spent more than a grand on a punt. So we spent £800 on 20 sheets at £40 each — some red, some black and some marble splatter. And that was a big success for us — it gave us something interesting to talk about.

“By this point we’d developed quite an extensive range of — I will call them — ‘pretty basic’ designs. We are not known for our complexity. We are not Kurage, House of Harlot, Inner Sanctum or Bondinage.

“But men have liked that. Straight men have liked that actually — simplicity seems to win out. 

“But now we could basically take all our existing designs, make some minor tweaks, do it in the new fabric and we’re like, ‘Ooh, we like this, this’ll sell’. So we started to do a bit of that. 

“And when we realised that that was a thing, and we started to get busier, we thought, we’ll get a laser cutter, ’cos a laser cutter will definitely help us. Because we’re making loads of shorts and underwear. 

“I don’t think anybody in the industry makes more shorts than we make, partly because we’re very aggressive on price, partly because they fit really well and people like them, partly because we like them and you sell what you like. 

“But because we make so many small pieces, we thought we’ll get a laser cutter so we can cut everything out really quickly. That would have been a huge mistake because it’s not true. 

“What the laser lets you do is detailed and intricate things and appliqués and all that sort of stuff. And we could see small lasers were being used more.

“We could see really intricate panels turning up in designs and it was starting to pop up that people were very good at appliqué now. 

“And I thought no, fuck it, get a big one, it’s only money. We bought a big one, two metres long, so we could do catsuits. So we got that in and we thought, what else can we do with this thing? 

“And through a process of experimentation we fried a lot of material but we developed the textured latex that we have now become really known for.”

They designed two textures initially, and took their first textured pieces to Fetish Evolution in Essen in 2013. 

“And honestly it went like that!” says Richard with a snap of his fingers. “And we’re like, OK, this is gonna work — let’s design some new textures, and let’s do some new garment designs that really work with textures as well. 

“And all of a sudden we had the ability to do the marbled and the textured. And that’s when we established ourselves as doing something that other people found difficult — that there was a barrier of entry to.

“So we protected ourselves form the girls-in-bedrooms brigade. I have a lot of respect for them, but the problem they bring the industry is that they don’t understand how expensive something really is to make.”

ENLARGING THE TEAM

When the partners realised they had an opportunity to establish a name for what they’d created and were trying to do, they decided they needed more people to help them achieve that aim.

And this is where the redoubtable Jo De Gisi comes into the story again.

“While the business is Stewart’s and mine,” says Richard, “Jo is our greatest asset in terms of the advice she gives. She’s very safe — she’s been in the industry longer than we have.