Have I ever told you about the greeting card store Bound & Gagged opened in Allentown, PA back in 2004? At the time, small adult companies were having problems keeping their business card privileges with respectable banks, which considered themselves to be less sleazy than porn producers, though I’m pretty sure the contrary was as true then as now. In any case, we were notified by the institution that granted us our account—I believe it was Bank of America, that paragon of impeccable business practices—that they were going to drop us because all our sales were online only. I doubt they made similar threats to Amazon or eBay.
A friend who ran a leather shop in Allentown came up with the suggestion that we open a gift and greeting card shop in the store that had just become vacant next door to his, since no bank could deny merchant privileges to an honest merchant with an actual shop. This seemed to us an excellent idea, and since we had an unemployed friend who was willing to work for next to nothing (which was the amount we could afford to pay), we did. We called the store A Different Eye, a play on the title “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”, which was a popular TV show at the time.
To make a long story short, A Different Eye, which was more or less a working shop for six months, failed. The friend who was running it was having a nervous breakdown because of problems with his meth-head boyfriend, so he was rarely around to keep the door open. As a result, Bank of America didn’t see the store doing much any credit card business (though we were still doing real well online). And the city of Allentown itself was having a nervous breakdown, unable to get its act together—I think the mayor went to jail for some kind of criminal mischief—even to the point of not getting around to granting us our actual business license until several months after we closed down the business. So adieu, A Different Eye.
Why am I telling you this? Because when A Different Eye shut down, Lee and I found ourselves with thousands of great, mostly gay-oriented greeting cards on our hands, not to mention soaps and lotions and candles and fragrances and rainbow-colored doodads, the bulk of which have spent the last 8 or 9 years sealed in boxes in our barn.
Two weeks ago, we decided to do something about them, like see what’s in the boxes and find a hopefully profitable way to get rid of them. When we did, the first thing we came upon was a big stash of great Christmas cards, and Valentines cards, many really good and funny ones. So we did the reasonable thing: took a deep breath and opened an eBay store which we’re calling —surprise!—A Different Eye! (I still think it’s a pretty good name).
And now for my sales pitch: if you’re looking for Christmas and holiday cards, and will be looking for Valentines cards and birthday cards and any number of different kinds of cards, (and eventually goofy gifts), our cards are all new, unopened, funny if not raunchy, not always gay but often so, and selling at very good prices.
But don’t take my word for it. Check us out yourselves at http://stores.ebay.com/A-Different-Eye.
I'd better warn you in advance, if you're looking for BDSM themes among them, you'll probably be disappointed.
Since we’re a brand new venture, eBay only allows us to list 200 items per month for the first 90 days so if you get the impression we’ve a limited inventory, keep checking in. We've got a whole lot more cards and stuff we'll be putting up little by little.
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