Interview with Sexquire, business services for the adult industry!

Davis, a representative from a new company called "Sexquire" took the time to tell us a bit about their company. We think some of the businesses at Steamy should be VERY interested in this company! They're a group of professionals that are sex positive, kink aware, providing services for the adult industry and other businesses that sometimes get turned away from "vanilla" companies. Check it out!

How do you pronounce Sexquire?
It's just like the word "esquire" but just with "sex" in the beginning!

And how did you come up with such a cool name?
The word esquire, although some people think it's only used for attorneys, can be used for any business professional in the historic sense of the word. So, we thought it was a good, short name that right away got your attention and let you know what this had to do with.

Cool! When I first stumbled across your company, I got a visual of a Knighted pornstar in shining armour charging around with her "squire" at her side carrying legal documents and making people sign contracts, so that's great.
[Laughing.]

And what services do you provide? What is Sexquire?
We provide business professional services. Legal services such as setting up a company to setting up contracts, filing trademarks, anything that may come up relating to business issues -- also, book keeping and accounting. We have some web developers and a marketing agency that we work with... and business coaching/consulting/virtual assistance company... and then also a merchant service provider, to do credit card processing.

How did you get the idea to create Sexquire? Over the past seven years, I've worked with retail stores, educators, different people [involved in the adult industry]. And a lot of the same issues came up for them, you know, finding a good accountant who can understand and can say the names for their inventory. A credit card processor who doesn't just say, "Oh, this has to do with something adult? We don't do that." The issues they kept facing were all kind of the same, so I had this idea....

One of my clients is a retail sex store in Minneapolis (The Smitten Kitten, www.smittenkittenonline.com), and they had this "all star team" idea where once a year they got all of their accountants, and their attorneys and their web people and had a meeting to say, "Hey, let's make sure everyone is talking to each other." It's just so much better when everyone is talking to each other.

So I figured I'd just assemble an "all star team" I knew I could trust to work with people in the adult industry, and people who I knew had experience in the same thing.

How long the company been been around?
Just since May of this year.

I've worked with businesses in the industry my entire career, so seven years. The other people on the team have different levels of experience, but everyone's pretty established in their field. Familiar with the issues that come up, and the specific tweaks that there are to the different parts of the industry.

And you, Davis, you run a law firm?
Yes, I've been an attorney for seven years and as of February, I have my own law firm.

So who are the staff members?
Lori Bruzek, who owns Big Picture Accounting, is our accountant/book keeper... another is Sarah Sloane, a well known sex educator who also owns a company called Equilibrium Consulting. She does virtual assisting, marketing, strategizing, and business planning. She was one of the first people I talked to when I had the idea, and she thought it was a really cool idea, so she has been on board from the beginning... We've got a couple of other folks that we work with. Lori and Sarah are kind of the primary "brainstormers", on the project...

Thus far, a lot of the work that we've been doing is accounting work, so Lori's been a lot of the base of Sexquire.

Very cool. Are you looking to add any more services to your repertoire in the future?
I think we'll add services as people need them. We set up some services in the beginning, then figured we'd take a break and see what people need.

If someone calls and says, "Do you do 'this'?" I try to keep a list of people who work in the industry that others have spoken highly of, so that we can add as people need things....That's one of the great things about the set up of Sexquire, where each of the companies on the team is a subcontractor so we can always add someone else as needed, but make sure we're always doing the project management. So I'm always overseeing the project and making sure everything gets done.

Makes sense to us! So, are there any types of businesses you can't do business with or represent? Escorts, for example?
No, not thus far that we've come across.

We prefer to do business with the sex positive portion of the industry, so sex positive boutiques, performers and directors and educators who are doing cutting edge work. Things like that. But you know, we've talked about what if we were approached by a company or someone we don't really agree with. Someone who doesn't identify as being sex positive. Or they're not, something about what they do would kind of give us pause, "oh, this doesn't really advance the sex positive movement."

And we've talked about, that's just an opportunity for education! We wouldn't necessarily rule someone out right away, we might say, "Hey, you know, we're not comfortable with this or that, that you do" -- be it selling unsafe products or not having the most ethical standards about something. We've talked about it and thought, well, So we've talked about making that an opportunity for education. We'd say, "these are the things that we think you should change. It'd make your business better, and it'd give us an opportunity to work with you."

We can't disclose who our clients are, but if it's run like a business, and needs business services, they are probably a good fit for us.

Is the best way to get in touch with you Sexquire.com?
Sure! You can contact me directly, davis@sexquire.com or visit the website at sexquire.com to get our phone number and all that other information.

Are you on any Social Networking sites?
facebook.com/sexquire
twitter.com/sexquire

Is there anything else exciting coming up in your future that you'd care to share, or events you'll be attending soon? I may be at the Center for Sex Pleasure and Health in Rhode Island, they're having an open house in October. So we'll be there, and I'll probably also be in New York for a few days after that, so we're looking to set up in person meetings with folks who have inquired about Sexquire while we're there.

Thanks to Davis for such a great interview. Again, if you are a business needing these kinds of services, you can contact Sexquire through Sexquire.com and please friend them on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with them.