Surprise, Surprise: Home Parties Prove That, Even in the Most Demure Living Rooms, Sex Still Sells.
In a comfortable, middle-class ranch house in Bartlett — where guests are asked to remove their shoes before stepping across new vanilla-colored carpeting — the 22 women sip wine, nibble hors d'oeuvres and await the arrival of the sex lady.
The Chicago Tribune
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Move over, Tupperware and Avon. Surprise Parties is putting the "IN" in in-home parties. But these home parties have become a lot saucier than the ones many women think of —parties in which they can buy makeup or storage dishes. Think lingerie and sex toys.
"The party environment normalizes the subject matter and there is no stigma attached if your friends are doing it too. It definitely helps to take away the embarrassment factor." — The Chicago Sun Times
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It's not exactly news that sex sells. It's just that its paraphernalia turns up in the darnedest places. Like the living rooms of nice, middle-class folks.
Some merchandising of the stuff transpired in Rose Spiller's Joliet home one recent Friday evening. Following a few suggestions delivered by Surprise Parties sales representative Heather Fennig, the half-dozen women who came to the party stocked up on lingerie, toiletries, scented candles and other items designed to add a bit of spice to their most private of lives.
— The Chicago Sun
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Dawn, a customer service rep at the Department of Motor Vehicles, is today's sexually liberated woman. Skip the '90's; this is the Aught Age. She's not some free lovin' hippie throwback. Her brand of sexual awareness is post-post feminist, the marketing-age sexuality of "romance gifts" and "relationship aids", of lotions and potions, of scented candles and vibrators and flimsy filigreed garments like the one she finally winds up buying in blue.— The Washington Post
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The way Surprise Parties does it is to offer an invitation-only, women-only event where those attending from newlyweds to grandmothers can see, touch, smell and taste a variety of what might be called products for lovers, or romance gifts.
Many would not be comfortable going to an adult products store, or even ordering by mail from a catalog. “We're not sleaze merchants,” Rhea said. “We're empowering women by offering them a way to spice up their romantic lives in a respectful, private way.” “We really do sell romance,” said Michelle Douglas, Surprise Parties District Manager for Middle Tennessee. — The Tennessean
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