From Catholic schoolgirl to college journalism major, Casey Murphy never set out to become a pleasure products business owner — but following her love for marketing eventually led to landing her first job in the adult industry, as an advertising coordinator for XBIZ in 2005. From there, Murphy continued to build her career in the sexual wellness industry, working in various aspects of distribution, wholesale and ecommerce within niche markets, manufacturing, trade shows, sales and marketing, as well as copywriting and digital marketing.
In 2016, Murphy brought those experiences and skills together to create her femme-owned business, The Pleasure Parlor. The company offers sex-positive, premium body-safe products, hand-curated and catering to a diverse range of curious shoppers. Murphy infuses her ideas and humor into an array of unique offerings, including virtual sex toy bingo, mystery prize giveaways and online girl party chats discussing sex ed and femme empowerment. Her subscription service indulges sexual explorations from sensual to kinky, with options including the “fully-personalized” Just For Me box geared towards solo pleasure seekers and the Just For Us box created for lovers.
I was excited to create the welcoming, inclusive playground of sex toys and education that I would want to see.
The Making of a Pleasure Parlor Diva
Before entering the sex toy arena, Murphy began her career in the music industry as a marketing intern at Universal Music/Interscope Records. It was there that she learned about guerilla grassroots marketing strategies like handing out event flyers and CD samplers after concerts, and hosting album release parties at local bars, coffee shops and indie record stores throughout Los Angeles and the greater SoCal area.
“Everything I know about marketing, I learned in the music industry,” Murphy said. “I also learned that marketing — something I knew very little about during college — was the career I was meant for.”
From that love of marketing, Casey began to build her boutique sex toy business, one pop-up shop at a time — an idea inspired by her music industry guerrilla marketing days. One day in Portland, Oregon in 2016, Murphy set up her first pop-up shop at a friend’s party, where she ventured into selling her “adult” wares to guests.
“I totally tanked because I hate selling! I like to let the products do the talking,” Murphy said about her first experience.
Still, she was motivated by the idea of bringing pleasure products to public events, hoping to break down the taboos and show people that sex toy shopping didn’t need to be intimidating. It could even be fun. From there, Murphy and her sex toys began popping up everywhere. She began showcasing her products at mainstream events with her whimsical, traveling pop-up shop decorated with unicorns and crystals at femme-led art shows, bingo nights, women-owned plant shops, a fat-positive fashion show, college health fairs and International Women’s Day parties.
She designed “unique kits ("for dicks, clits and nips") with fun adult products like Hello Kitty vibes, unicorn butt plugs, candy jawbreaker ball gags, adult coloring books and rainbow pasties. Her goal was to make sex toys more acceptable and accessible, so from afar they just looked like fun, cool toys — which they were, of course — just not the kind of toys people were expecting.
“By the time they approached the table, they were surprised to see what the products actually were,” Murphy said. “As a result, they were more inclined to ask questions and purchase. Most of them shared that they wouldn't have come up to the table if they knew it was full of adult products. By bringing that type of product selection to public events, I hoped to shift some misconceptions and open people up to the idea that there is a sex toy for every style and experience level.”
She also started an annual “Galentine's Night” at a local bar for ladies’ night. She created drink specials and brought sexy gift bags for the attendees, as well as an assortment of solo-play toys to sell.
Six years later, Murphy now runs her own sexual wellness business from her home in Denver, Colorado. Her office is lit with purple ambient lighting with binaural beats playing on her headphones to keep her brain stimulated throughout the day. Next to her sits an open notebook, doodled with creative ideas in colorful inks. Her desk is also home to a lava lamp, a Stevie Nicks pillar candle for inspiration — and perhaps witchy manifesting spell work — various crystals, a copy of the Associated Press Stylebook and a vintage Troll doll with purple hair. A large shelving unit beside the desk houses fashionable pairs of well-loved roller skates, various sexual health books, and decorative sex toys as embellished accents. Nearby, a bunch of products sit waiting to have their photos taken for reviews.
Murphy spends her mornings waking up two hours before starting work to read a nonfiction book in bed, with her morning brewed cup of tea to chillax and ease into her workday.
“When I get on the phone immediately, it offsets the entire day,” she said. “I can feel motivation and creativity slowly draining from my body if I fall down the rabbit hole of emails and social media. I spend a lot of my day on social media for work, so I try to limit that to specific blocks of time instead of consuming an entire morning with it. No phone for those first two hours makes a huge difference in my day!”
Aside from fulfilling orders for her custom-curated subscription boxes, Murphy spends most of her time consulting with sexual wellness startup brands on how to achieve organic growth through content marketing strategies in the sexual wellness space.
“The Pleasure Parlor is still a part-time project because I am a full-time marketing consultant for other brands in the industry,” she notes. “Most of my 9-to-5 office hours are dedicated to client work, which includes creating social media graphics and captions, taking product photos, writing blogs, newsletters or press releases, market analysis and B2B sales strategy. As a creative, I couldn’t ask for a better job.”
Running her own business, however, is not without its challenges. Having an ADHD diagnosis, Murphy says she sometimes struggles with keeping her focus on the task at hand. To manage distractions, she uses the Pomodoro method of time management — focusing on completing one task for a short amount of time — to enable her to be more productive.
At 5 p.m., Casey shifts into Pleasure Parlor mode: packing subscription boxes, taking them to the post office, placing dropship orders, social media posts, creating graphics, reviewing her web analytics and adding new products to the site. She usually wraps up around 9 p.m., trying to eat dinner sometime during that time frame, but admits that she has “an aversion to cooking.”
In 2020, Casey added sexual health educator Javay da Bae to The Pleasure Parlor as managing partner and CXO (chief experience officer), to employ more streamlined systems, help with customer service, packing and shipping, and to motivate Murphy with the occasional “kick in the pants.”
What’s in the Box?
Casey describes The Pleasure Parlor as “an online sex toy boutique, a quarterly subscription box service, and a traveling pop-up shop.”
“I curate the product selection based on my own personal experience with each item, manufacturer and the product’s integrity,” she said.
The Pleasure Parlor offers two recurring custom-tailored boxes: the couples’ box (Just For Us) and a solo play box (Just For Me). Customers select custom options at checkout to indicate their anatomy, experience level, relationship status and product tastes. Then, Murphy curates each custom box based on their preferences with high-quality, body-safe items and creative playful add-ons.
“Because of the distinct customization options, it is rare for two boxes to feature the same products,” Murphy said.
In addition to pleasure products, the boxes often feature educational resources like books and hand-created postcards with intimacy and pleasure tips catering to a wide variety of sexual flavors, from vanilla to kinky.
Recently, The Pleasure Parlor has come out with two new single-purchase boxes: The Zodiac box and the Power Play box.
“The Zodiac box was the first of its kind, with items tailored around the sex traits of each astrological sign,” Murphy said. “I worked with an astrologer to identify the core characteristics to hit the mark with accuracy for each box. The Power Play box incorporates a gender-inclusive curation with sexual wellness products from femme-led brands, including an external vibe, a bath bomb, personal wipes, and a book about pleasure and social justice: ‘Pleasure Activism’ by author adrienne maree brown.”
Murphy notes that the subscription boxes account for 75% of her sales, and seem to appeal to her ideal clients, who are beginner-level sex toy enthusiasts. She believes the subscription box option helps her customers “navigate the shopping experience.”
“Investing in a subscription box removes the guesswork and adds an element of surprise to their experience,” Murphy said. “With that said, their initial experience can make or break the decision to continue exploring, so I aim to exceed expectations as much as possible.”
While many retailers are going the opposite way, building huge sex toy marketplaces a la Amazon, Murphy says she aims to curate hand-picked, quality-tested, sexpert- and femme-approved items. That way she knows she can stand behind the products she is selling and give her customers a pleasurable experience — both shopping and in the bedroom.
Why create a subscription box service in the first place? Where did this idea come from? Subscription box services are nothing new and do well in other industries, including beauty and fashion, wine, book-of-the-month clubs and services that cater to kids and pets. Yet there are few such services in the adult pleasure industry, so Murphy decided to go her own way and try something a bit different.
“I was inspired to start the business after about a year of reflecting on how I could make the most impact and cater to sexual wellness consumers of all experience levels,” she said. “I was excited to create the welcoming, inclusive playground of sex toys and education that I would want to see, from a human-centric approach that addressed the most common pain points and needs of sexual wellness consumers.”
Pop-up shops, sex toy fashion shows, naughty bingo, unicorn butt plugs, rainbows, Zodiac boxes, and kitty vibes all sound very, well, fantastic. So, where did Murphy get her creativity from?
Part of Murphy's inspiration with the subscription box service, she says, comes from recalling how her mother always incorporated a unique style and personal touch into her gourmet gift basket business in the 1990s: “Whether she’s wrapping a gift or decorating for the holidays, there is a big emphasis on attention to detail and she passed that onto me.”
A Look Into the Crystal Ball
This month, Murphy is planning a “XXX Bingo Night” and pop-up shop at a tiki bar to celebrate International Masturbation Month. What does XXX Bingo at a tiki bar look like with Murphy?
“It's a bingo night for an adult audience with X-rated prizes,” she explained. “I'm a bingo fanatic, so any excuse to intertwine sex education, a mainstream audience and bingo is my jam. I mix in a bit of sex education and porn trivia between calling the bingo numbers. This is just one type of avenue/event that gets this type of business into the faces of people who are open to it. Meeting potential customers where they are at in their journey, whether literally or figuratively, has been a key component of our success thus far.”
As far as future goals for The Pleasure Parlor, Murphy would like to enhance the site’s online learning resources to deliver pleasure and sexual health education and information with a focus on menopause and perimenopause. She also plans on offering more niche product bundles and subscription boxes, to “create breakthrough customer experiences” that respond directly to her customers’ struggles, while valuing “services over products.”
“At the end of the day, we want to design the most inviting, inclusive atmosphere that establishes a place for creative pleasure in every lifestyle,” Murphy concluded.
