Sex swells the kitty

By Deborah Hill Cone

Friday 2nd November 2001

FIRST VIXEN OF EROTICA: Fiona Gibb says the sex industry is becoming more mainstream and less stigmatised

She's beautiful, she's brainy, she wears Versace, drives a purple MG and owns her own business.

Fiona Gibb could be a high-energy dotcom entrepreneur or pass as a slightly flamboyant corporate lawyer - you certainly wouldn't assume she runs a sex empire.

But Vixen Direct, the business she started from her suburban Auckland garage, is the country's biggest adult video distributor. It also sells sex toys and operates internet businesses, while the sex and lifestyle expo Erotica it launched last year was a huge success - and not just among the raincoat brigade.

The day I slink into Vixen's Ellerslie headquarters - I admit I even found myself looking round to check no one saw me going in - Ms Gibb and her team are flat out preparing for next week's Erotica event. She is checking photos of Penthouse pet Bree Maddox, whom she brought out here to promote the event, and talking about her troupe of promotional product girls - another business she has on the side - and how Vixen sponsors motorsport and boxing. "I'm a petrolhead from way back" she says, almost straightfaced.

As her offices are purple-themed - "it's my colour" - and she calls her staff "sweetheart" when they serve tea and bikkies, she'd be 90% Ab Fab and 10% Linda Lovelace. It's about now I feel very silly for having been so wussy about being seen walking in Erotica's door.

Sure, the pictures on the wall are more lurid than your average office (unless you are a panelbeater) but the amount of hard work is obviously just the same - and most importantly, so is the money rolling in.

But it hasn't always been like this. Ms Gibb's life story would make the plot of great rags-to-riches paperback - and not an X-rated one.

A Rotorua girl, she had a tough time growing up. Moving around constantly with her psychiatrist father and physiotherapist mother meant she went to 12 different primary schools: "I was really quite rebellious."

She left school with only School C and "did a lot of things" including direct-selling Mary Kay cosmetics: "My bubbly personality meant I never wanted to just sit behind a desk," Ms Gibb said.

She didn't have it easy - as a single mother, she dealt with her son Darren's severe attention deficit disorder - "he even got kicked out of kindergarten"- recovered from a serious car accident in which she broke her neck and struggled for money.

"There were days when we were really scraping together the money for a bottle of milk."

Her big break came when she answered an ad for a secondhand car salesman. She got the job working in a caryard in Manukau: "I found I had this real talent for selling a bigger ticket item than a bottle of moisturiser."

She became the top selling salesperson and her obsessive organisational streak saw her reorganise the yard's office.

"While the others were sitting down having coffee I was learning all these office and business skills just because I can't sit still."

Ms Gibb went to Japan on two buying trips at the height of the Jap import boom and ended up living in there for a year. She acted as a liaison between the Japanese agent and buyers from New Zealand, Russia and the UK: "I organised everything from passports to partying."

Back in New Zealand Ms Gibb went to work for larger-than-life auto man Bill Peart - you might remember him from the Wynn's oil TV ads - running his franchise business.

She was the first female executive Mr Peart had ever employed - it took him three months to even come round to the idea of hiring a chick.

"Instead of learning at university I learned on the job about accounting and budgets. It was an incredible learning curve. I also learned about what not to do," Ms Gibb said.

The Wynn's empire collapsed two years after Ms Gibb left.

But it was there that Ms Gibb met her business partner Steve Crow, a property developer behind the classy Remuera apartment development 456 Remuera Rd. (Auckland mayor John Banks is one of its residents).

The pair's live-in relationship ended earlier this year but they have remained business partners.

When Ms Gibb left the Peart empire she took over a small mail order business owned by Mr Crow, Grafton Marketing, which sold adult CD-Roms. That company has now grown to become Vixen Direct.

In the early days Grafton Marketing had very few titles, but Ms Gibb signed up to distribute product from Nasdaq-listed giant Private Media Group, a $500 million company headquartered in Spain.

"It's run by businesspeople people rather than the traditional type of people in the adult industry."

Ms Gibbs' company became a video distributor selling to main clients United Video, Civic Video and Video Ezy. Adult titles can make up to 10% of a video retailer's profit if they manage them properly, Ms Gibb recently told a conference of retailers.

Vixen had 600% growth each year in its first few years and is now making "a lot" of money, although Ms Gibb will not reveal figures.

But it has not all been easy.

"It was a blast but because we were in the adult business we have been discriminated against," Ms Gibb said.

She said when her partner Steve Crow showed their bank, ANZ, their business plan the bank realised for the first time what business they were in and instantly clamped down on their accounts, pulling their overdrafts and stopping them from drawing on uncleared cheques.

"We had banked with them for five years and within 48 hours we were effectively shut down," Ms Gibb said.

ANZ said it was part of a restructuring of their medium-sized business accounts, but Ms Gibb said the business managers made it clear they did not like what Vixen did. "All of a sudden it was like I'm a naughty girl and someone's slapping me on my hand."

ANZ public affairs manager Steve Fisher said at the end of 1998 the bank did restructure and there were some teething problems. But he could "virtually guarantee" it was nothing to do with the industry Ms Gibb was in.

Ms Gibb said without the ability to borrow money and with little working capital the business had been built up using its own cashflow and relying on strong relationships with its suppliers and customers.

"It's about building relationships based on honesty and trust - being able to convince people you're good for the money in six months time."

Even so the pair knew they were on to a winner. "It was a gut feel, we knew this company was going to work."

Until Vixen came on the scene there was very little good European adult products available, with most products sourced from the US through 17 separate distributors. Now there are only three, with Vixen and Video Wholesalers the two biggest.

The adult industry has been at the vanguard of new technology and Ms Gibb and Mr Crow were early pioneers of DVD and websites, technology that has revolutionised the industry. At one stage they owned the sex.co.nz name, among others.

Ms Gibb said the sex industry was in the process of becoming more mainstream and less stigmatised - just look at what Sex and the City has done to make discussions about anal sex acceptable.

"The internet has done a lot to change that - you now have access in a friendly, comfortable environment in your own home."

Ms Gibb is passionate about rehabilitating the image of the adult industry and has become its unofficial spokeswoman - among her crusades is fighting for clearer law on censorship (not a top government priority).

"One week you get cuts to a video, the next week they will allow it. There is no set of rules."

Erotica has also been part of her plan to change people's attitudes.

"A lot of the idea for Erotica grew out of passion for changing the face of the adult industry in this country - we are still living in the dark ages."

Ms Gibb believes there is a hypocritical prudishness among the business community. She tells a story of going to a black tie function at an accounting firm. The people she met were fascinated by her and wanted to know all about the sex business - but on a business level they are still scared to be seen anywhere near it.

"People you deal with at the coalface think you are fantastic but it is higher up they worry about the company's reputation. Businesspeople at the top are prudish about maintaining the business 'name'."

This year she hopes Erotica will be twice the size of last year - "which did not just make money, it made a lot of money."

Last year Ms Gibb had difficulty getting her advertising into the media but this year she has PR firm Drum and media buyers Optimedia helping build the event's profile.

Some publications like Metro will now run the ads, which are just words "with no busty blondes," but others, like Next, still won't, even though Erotica's focus on sensuality and aromatherapy would fit perfectly with Next's alternative health focus.

Ms Gibb had to overcome widespread opposition to Erotica, even from within her own business: "My own industry told me I would not pull it off."

She said some of the success of last year's event came down to good business practice - she kept a tiny team and worked very hard.

Forty-four per cent of the 16,000 visitors to Erotica were women and this year she aims to get 25,000 people through the doors.

She even had an agree-to-disagree discussion with Christian Heritage Party leader Graham Capill after he criticised Erotica. 'I think he was surprised I was intelligent and articulate, not some sleazy old man."

Ms Gibb, who has never been married, describes herself as old-fashioned and says she is waiting to meet the right man. " I still believe families should be families."

She doesn't accept criticism that the sex industry and events such as Erotica are destabilising to marriages.

Ms Gibb's argument: the two biggest problems in relationships are money and sex. "We can't fix the money problems but we can fix the sex thing. We're trying to promote a healthy attitude to sex. We're keeping marriages together."

She is honest about the downside of working with sex all day - sometimes she has to watch eight adult videos and eight DVDs a month, before sending off the paperwork to the classification office. "I'd be a liar if I said it didn't affect your sex life. But you're responsible for keeping that side of your life happy."

This time when I leave the building I keep my head up and look around. Hell, if she can, why shouldn't I?

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