For much of her decades-long career in the adult products industry, Cee Cee Peters let her work speak louder than her name. While she built relationships with retailers, became a top salesperson, and watched the business evolve from a movie-dominated marketplace into today’s sexual wellness industry, Peters deliberately kept a relatively low public profile. Raising children during the rise of the internet made that decision especially important to her.
Now that her children are adults, Peters is more comfortable stepping into the spotlight and reflecting on a career that has given her a front-row seat to some of the industry’s most significant changes.
I’m grateful for all my work experiences, as they've enabled me to succeed on a global scale.
Today, Peters serves as global sales manager at Perfect Fit Brand, bringing decades of experience across distribution, manufacturing and retail-facing operations to the role.
Her industry career began in the VHS era, when adult video drove the business.
“There were a lot of movies coming out all the time,” Peters reminisces. “You really had to have your act together to know the titles, who’s in them, what’s a good seller, and which companies were better.”
With hundreds of releases available, salespeople might interact with the same retailer clientele almost daily. It was a highly competitive sales environment, overwhelmingly male.
“It was intimidating,” she says of those early years.
Rather than letting that environment limit her ambitions, Peters made a point of asking whether advancement was truly possible. At one company, she directly asked management whether she had the opportunity to become the company's No. 1 salesperson.
“They said yes, and I achieved that,” she gushes. “I achieved it after one year.”
When ecommerce began reshaping adult retail, Peters became an early believer in its potential. Landing a major online customer meant doing much of the painstaking product work manually at a time when distributors did not have today’s digital infrastructure.
“I spent 90 hours a week developing my own list because we never had data,” she recalls.
That willingness to do the work became a defining characteristic of her career, alongside customer service.
Peters says her approach to sales has always been grounded in long-term relationships.
“I would handle a return authorization before I would take a new order in,” she stresses. “I felt it was very important to take care of the customers.”
That philosophy has helped Peters cultivate relationships that span years and, in some cases, decades.
“When I pick up the phone, they know what they get with me,” she says. “They get honesty and integrity. I’ve never sold anything to anyone that I didn’t believe would work well for them.”
Those relationships have also given Peters extensive insight into the challenges facing brick-and-mortar retailers.
Over the years, she has spent significant time on the road visiting stores and learning how individual businesses operate. She has encouraged retailers to focus on fundamentals such as average transaction values, customer loyalty programs, inventory productivity, and the effective use of their physical locations.
“Those stores that have been good to their employees and customers are still very much surviving,” she asserts.
Peters has also watched adult retail evolve dramatically. Early stores were built primarily around movies, with pleasure products making up a much smaller share of the business. As toys began to replace video sales, retailers increasingly began to rethink their merchandising and customer base.
“They realized the toys were picking up,” Peters recalls. “Stores started to understand that ‘We’ve got to make it prettier in here. We’ve got to get the female shopper in here.’”
Bachelorette merchandise helped attract more women to adult stores, while innovations in pleasure products, boutique brands, and increased cultural discussions about sexuality continued to drive the market's growth.
After years working across distribution and manufacturing companies, Peters briefly retired. She eventually returned to the business, first through retailer training and account management roles, before joining Perfect Fit about a year ago.
“I’m thankful for all the experiences from every place I worked because they got me to where I can do this successfully on a global level,” she beamed.
Perfect Fit appealed to Peters because she had already seen how well its products performed. She also appreciated the company’s manufacturing capabilities and the leadership of owner Trish Welch.
Peters credits Welch, along with Full Circle Brands owner Mike Savage, XBIZ’s Sara Ramirez, and industry vet Kim Airs, as mentors who helped shape her career.
Peters now draws heavily on the retailer feedback she has gathered throughout her career to help Perfect Fit support stores, distributors and private-label partners.
“Our company is all about, ‘How can we help you?’” she emphasizes.
Among the opportunities Peters sees for retailers is developing exclusive products that cannot be directly price-compared with those on major online marketplaces. Peters says the competitive pressure from online shopping has made disciplined inventory management more important than ever.
She encourages retailers to think more like mainstream merchants by regularly evaluating what sells, cutting weaker variations, and reallocating funds to merchandise that turns over more quickly.
“You walk into some stores and find an excess of the same item," Peters notes. “Their money’s sitting on the wall.”
Rather than continually adding products just because they are new, she believes stores should build more intentional product assortments.
“Our industry is not going anywhere,” Peters affirms. “We all need to ramp up how we’re thinking about how many products we’re putting out and carrying.”
Looking ahead, Peters is focused on helping Perfect Fit expand its retail support, including a revamped tester program to equip store employees with better tools to present the brand. She also hints at new technology planned for the coming year.
For Peters, however, the principles guiding the next chapter are essentially the same as those that have carried her through decades of industry change: cultivate a business built on trust.
“Our goal is to remain very mindful of our distributors, retailers and consumers,” she vows. “We’re keeping it real for them.”
