Wu Wei fantasizes about selling sex toys to the Chinese.
In a country where sex is best discussed in shadowy karaoke parlors or among close friends, Wu is packing retail shelves with sex toys, exhorting salespeople to interact with customers and cajoling local TV stations to run product demonstrations.
PHOTO: REUTERS
As president of Wenzhou Loves Health Products, he oversees a China-based operation that ranks among the world's top 10 makers of erotica from basic sex aids to adjustable inflatable dolls.
Yet, despite a global export empire stretching from Las Vegas to Amsterdam, the former store salesman has never quite managed to get a grip on his home market, and not for a lack of trying.
The trick, Wu says, is to get people to talk about sex.
"Demand in China may be much bigger than in our dreams right now," said Wu, 33. "China has a very conservative culture. But from our experience, Chinese today don't entirely reject sex products. I think if they need it, they'll buy it."
For now, Loves is content to export 70 percent of its products to mature markets like Europe and the US.
Brandishing a giant pink sex toy, the unassuming executive explains the simple philosophy behind Loves' emergence from humble origins as a chain of "health protection product" stores to a global exporter assembling 10,000 sex toys a day.
"Our motto is `Enhance your sexual prowess, enjoy sex to the fullest,'" Wu said as the heated instrument whirred to life.
"We try to fulfil our customers' desires. If they're happy, we're happy," he said.
More importantly, perhaps, was the funding from a silent Japanese partner who provided the product technology that differentiated Loves from its competitors and allowed it to win China's first license to make sex toys in 1995.
But there's more to the business than satisfying needs. The crew-cut, bespectacled Wu admits it's hard to arouse interest in China, a society where kissing in public is frowned upon.
"Even our own salespeople are initially uncomfortable showing customers how to use our products," Wu laments.
Thwarted by Chinese laws banning mass media advertising of sex toys, Loves is training point-of-sales representatives to spread its message of love.
It has a deal with pharmaceutical chain Sinopharm allowing Loves to display wares in its outlets across China.
It has affixed large, shiny labels bearing office phone numbers to product packages, inviting both business inquiries and feedback from curious browsers.
"Customers are beginning to open up and ask embarrassing questions. Gradually our own salespeople will loosen up and be better at promoting our products," Wu said.
Loves' website www.chinasextoys.net carries row upon row of graphic photographs of its mind-boggling product range.
A chorus line of surprised-looking dolls with adjustable heads and other body parts cavorts along one wall of Love's spacious showroom on the outskirts of gritty Wenzhou -- a private entrepreneur's haven in the eastern province of Zhejiang.
For the adventurous, Loves has rubber dinghies, beach balls with attachments and even an innocent, polka-dotted dairy cow.
"Well, some people ...," Wu said sheepishly.
But the future is "Lovebots."
"We're headed in that direction, where a doll has body heat, life-like skin and can move and speak. Our initial experiments are successful, now it's just a matter of designing it," Wu said.
"We spend three to four million yuan (US$362,500 to US$483,300) on research and development every year," he added.
The sheer abundance of aids excites mixed reactions -- from disgust to fascination to ribald amusement -- in Wenzhou's 100 or so "sex health product stores," mostly nestled in dim alleys.
"People come in all the time to look, but they seldom buy," said a 25-year-old salesgirl at Beautiful Spring Health Products.
Six out of every 10 customers are men, said Chen Aiping of Young Girls' Health Products in downtown Wenzhou. Some stare in open-mouthed curiosity, others dart in and out furtively under the cover of night, she said.
"Some people think it's a disgrace that such products are openly displayed in my store. They say it's so ugly," said Chen, 45, dressed in a rumpled pharmacists' white lab coat.
"People who come in are often shy or ashamed, because frankly speaking, they're all lacking in some way. Their spouses might be away or sick. Or maybe their partners can't satisfy them."
She sells five or six toys a month for up to 500 yuan each, which are promptly stashed in the darkest recesses of cupboards.
Most stores get by on more conventional products like condoms and medicinal sexual aids. But competition is intense and getting fiercer -- proprietors estimate the number of stores has grown from several dozen three years ago to nearly 100 now.
Undeterred, Wu hopes to increase market share in the US and Europe, hoping that production costs of under 100 yuan per toy would put it one-up over pricier overseas rivals.
Expanding the China market would be icing on the cake.
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