After being ill off work for six years Dean Farebrother was forced to do an IT course to keep his benefits.

Who would have guessed that doing the course would have led to the father of one setting up an online store, let alone one that would retail adult toys?

When bosses at a bank he worked for found out about his entrepreneurial activities he was fired on the spot. Determined to succeed Dean said “The sudden loss of income forced my hand and drove me to make a success of my fledgling business”.

He hasn’t looked back. Numerous awards later and SexToys.co.uk is one of the leading online adult retail stores.

I interviewed Dean to get a little bit more background on his motivations behind the business and marketing the website in such a competitive area.

We know your IT course gave you the skills to develop a site, but where did the passion come from for sex toys?

Dean: The passion came from the fact that I always wanted to run own business and be successful.

For as long as I can remember I’ve felt it was my destiny. It was never about the merchandise and ALL about the money and success.

I researched a lot of markets before choosing sex toys. I had a set criteria that I wanted to meet and sex toys seemed to tick all the boxes.

How is your order fulfilment managed?

The business was originally started from my cupboard under the stairs at home (when my daughter was still a baby). This was out-grown within three months when we moved into our first unit on a local enterprise park.

I still remember my wife and I packing the orders, licking the stamps and taking the sacks to the post office every day - one thing about starting your own business is that along the way you will end up doing every single job in the company at some point. 

We now have a large warehouse where we fulfil all of our retail and wholesale orders. Thankfully my stamp licking days are long gone.

The adult sector is extremely competitive, what marketing tactics are you soliciting in to get traffic?

Well that would be telling! But after eight years we are very successful on the SEO side of things and are top in the natural listings for most related search terms.

We are very lucky in that I am very experienced in SEO and another Director’s background is purely PR and Marketing so we have two people that are very experienced and driven in this department.

How are you going to maintain your position in the market?

I think the key is to never become complacent.

We are always looking to improve and reinvent every part of the business.

It’s one thing to be market leader but you can’t stay there unless you are always forging forward and rethinking your direction.

www.sextoys.co.uk