Page 60 - AVN August 2018

FEATURE
FAMILY “MANY OF OUR EMPLOYEES
HAVE BEEN HERE SINCE WE
BOUGHT THE BUILDING 12
YEARS AGO. WE HAVE A
HANDFUL OF EMPLOYEES
THAT HAVE BEEN WITH US
OVER 15 YEARS AND ONE
WHO HAS BEEN WITH US FOR
20 OF OUR 25 YEARS.”
—JULIE STEWART
FEATURE
Top left, Julie Stewart and Tom Stewart with their spouses, who both work at the company.
Also pictured, Sportsheets’ 25th anniversary party, which took place July 13.
60 | AVN.com | 8.18
TIES
Sportsheets marks a quarter-century
How long can a business survive? How long
of sex and mischief
can a family-owned business survive? How
long can a brother and sister work closely
with each other?
In the case of Huntington Beach-based
Sportsheets, the correct answer is at least a
quarter-century.
The company’s first product—the original
Sportsheet—was created by Tom Stewart, inspired
by a Late Night with David Letterman episode in the
mid-’80s in which the host jumped onto a Velcro
wall. Thinking this simple technology might
be fun to adapt for use with his girlfriend, Tom
designed Velcro wrist and ankle restraints and
clipped them onto anchor pads that would stick
onto a Velcro bedsheet. Like many a tech startup,
the Sportsheets brand was born in a garage, with
Tom staying up nights to sew his prototypes until
he came up with something that would, so to say,
stick.
From his base in Costa Mesa, California, Tom
began peddling his first Sportsheets out of his
beat-up Mazda, which, in true entrepreneurial
fashion, frequently ran out of gas. He borrowed
money to pursue his dream; soon after, the
namesake product became the brand name.
Determined to grow the company, Tom
incorporated it in 1993, offering the original
Sportsheets and adding separate blindfolds, tethers
and sports cuffs, all components of the Sportsheets
kit. Made of comfortable nylon fabric with easy-to-
use nylon webbing for tethers, these accessories
were the perfect follow-up to the Velcro restraints
and anchor pads used with their namesake
Sportsheets.
In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the
company, AVN sat down with Julie Stewart, Tom’s
beloved sister, who joined the company in 1995
and was named president in 2012.
According to Julie, “Tom is the creative spark
of the company, always has been and always
will be. He loves training stores and distributors
and inventing new products. In fact, he was the
one that came up with our signature brands: the
Sportsheets line, Sex in the Shower, Man Bound,
Edge, Sincerely and—most importantly—our
world-famous brand, Sex and Mischief, a playful
reference to S&M, which fuels many of our
products.”
Product development has always been a key
factor in Sportsheets’ success. Fifteen years ago,
the trademarked Under the Bed Restraint system
was released. Incorporating a four-point, spread-
eagle design, the system used nylon webbing
and was the first commercially available restraint
system that didn’t need bolts screwed into the
corners of the bedframe.
“Since we released the Under the Bed Restraint
system, we’ve sold over one million of them!” Julie
exclaimed. “This is far more than we could have
ever dreamed about and continues to be our best
seller.” By Kim Airs
When the company started in the early ’90s,
everything was made in that garage, then in
a small warehouse, using materials that were
sourced domestically in Southern California. With
the emergence of foreign manufacturing in the
early 2000s, Tom and Julie decided that the only
way to stay competitive, price-wise, was to begin
manufacturing overseas.
“What posed a big problem was that the
U.S. manufacturers of our raw materials, such
as webbing, saw their mills drying up because
they moved their own production companies
offshore,” Julie shared. “We had no other choice
but to manufacture many of our products
overseas, although I am proud to say that we still
manufacture 30 to 40 percent of our products right
here in our warehouse.”
In fact, a majority of the overseas-manufactured
Sportsheets products are imported in bulk so
the packaging can be sourced here in the U.S.
The products are then packaged in the domestic
warehouse, keeping the jobs of long-term
employees. Julie added, “Many of our employees
have been here since we bought the building 12
years ago. We have a handful of employees that
have been with us over 15 years and one who
has been with us for 20 of our 25 years. I think
retaining our employees for such a long period of
time is a key to our continued success.”
The domestic manufacturing includes all the
processes needed to keep up with the demand:
leather is cut using large presses, miles of webbing
are trimmed to exact lengths, fabric is machine cut
and then stitched by hand with powerful sewing
machines. Several of the products made at the
warehouse include feathers, which are carefully
sourced domestically for quality and consistency.
“In fact,” Julie emphasized, “if the qualit y is