#63: Expert Interview with Alice Derock, Entrepreneur & Founder of Wet For Her

Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional

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Wet For Her

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Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the episode? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #63 – Alice Derock Interview Jenn T Grace: Alright so I guess what I'd love to just have you maybe walk us through a little bit about your history, maybe a little bit about what you've done in the past, and what you- you know what experiences maybe led you to the point where you are, where you founded your current company. Alice Derock: Okay, so I used to work in the hotels in France, like at five star hotels. And I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and see what was missing was the idea of which product I could bring to the market, something new and something, you know that will help people or it be- yeah that would help people. So one day with my girlfriend we went to a love store to buy a sex toy, and the only thing that was proposed to us was really like you know realistic and with like not good image with straight girls on the back of the packaging and we were just like, "Don't you have anything for lesbians?" And the guy said, "No we don't have." And so then we went on the Internet and we didn't find any manufacturer of sex toys for lesbians. So this from where the story starts. Jenn T Grace: Okay so like most entrepreneurs, you're starting from a place of you were looking for something for yourself, and ended up- Alice Derock: Exactly. Jenn T Grace: Yeah. Okay so can you I guess share with the listeners where you're located, and then additionally- I know we were just talking about the different places that you have warehouses, because you are a global company. So I'd love for them to kind of get a good sense of just the size and magnitude of your- Alice Derock: Sure. So we started the business in France, like we launched the business in France and then like three months after, I moved to New York and then I really started the company in New York in fact. And so today the head office is in New York, we have the company in France also for all of Europe. We have warehouses in like California, in Santa Clara, warehouse in Paris, and we have just opened a warehouse in Sydney now. So we're covering North America, Europe, and Australia. Jenn T Grace: So what I guess in your work experience, or your past industry knowledge, or anything like that made you feel like you had what it took to basically carve out an entire new niche within a huge industry that's very male dominated I would imagine? Alice Derock: What helped me with my experience? Jenn T Grace: Mm hmm. Alice Derock: I will say- I would say that today what my experience in the hotel industry helped me with customer service, and that might be the only thing because coming from the hotel industry where we are giving service in fact to customers, it's very different from being a manufacturer. So I had to learn every step from designing, manufacturing, with the mold, with how it worked, packaging, and then shipping, and then warehousing, and then setting. And then we have all the marketing and everything. So I had to learn a lot in fact. Jenn T Grace: That sounds kind of crazy. So how long did it take you to go from inception of 'we need to do this because we ourselves need this, so we need to create this,' to actually having a product that goes to market? Alice Derock: It took like- it took like a year and a half. Jenn T Grace: Wow, that's not bad. Alice Derock: But that's not too bad, but that was only for one product. So it can go fast, but the mistake that I made was to put to the market only one product. We should have done like maybe a line of products and we did like maybe launched like five or six products one at a time ...