When Zach Goode first crossed paths with Electric Novelties over 20 years ago, both he and the company were deeply entrenched in the apparel world. Goode was handling sales for a friend’s novelty T-shirt company, Sik World, while Electric specialized in sexy lingerie and clubwear. After meeting as booth neighbors at trade shows and while bringing sexy, edgy fashion to music festivals like Ozzfest, Goode befriended the Electric team and eventually joined the company in 2011.
Now, over two decades later, when Goode attends music festivals it is not as a vendor but as the lead singer of the famed ’90s band Smash Mouth. However, you will also find him at pleasure industry trade shows, where he updates colleagues on his rock-star touring life while remaining a down-to-earth sales executive alongside the tightknit Electric team.
Over the years, we’ve built a great customer base and a great relationship with distributors and store buyers who trust that our quality is outstanding.
That team includes company president Elan Rofé at the helm, industry vet Adam Hasner as VP and Robert Rosen, who joined Electric in 2012 following a four-year tenure with Baci Lingerie. Goode and Rosen both joined Electric shortly after the Great Recession, just as the company was starting to segue into pleasure products.
“Fast-forward to today, and we have about 10 different brands we produce,” Goode notes. “We have Glas, Lux Fetish and more. We’ve gone all in with pleasure products, and I love it.”
Goode describes Electric’s offerings as “perennial bestsellers,” adding that the company has a knack for sourcing affordable products.
“That’s the company’s ethos: to offer everyday essential bestsellers at a value price,” he says.
That no-nonsense approach helped draw Rosen to the company.
“What stood out to me in particular was that Electric is all about business,” Rosen says. “From what I’ve seen in the last 15-plus years, in this industry, if you do a lot of simple things correctly a lot of times and let it compound, you can get pretty big and successful pretty quickly.”
Electric’s straightforward approach to business is also a big selling point for retailers, Goode observes.
“Over the years, we’ve built a great customer base and a great relationship with distributors and store buyers who trust that our quality is outstanding,” Goode says. “We’ve slowly evolved into bringing in some higher-priced items. We still have the value-based stuff, but we also offer a few things in the higher-price-point category, which really helps the bottom line.”
Among Electric’s higher-end assortment of pleasure products are the Together line of couples toys and realistic Luvdollz torsos.
“We don’t sell as many Luvdollz as we do Lux Fetish Bedspreaders, but every store sells the masturbators, and the stores make hundreds and hundreds of dollars on them as opposed to $2 per blindfold,” Goode says. “Some items have very high turnover and are everyday bestsellers, and some of the items, while stores don’t sell as many, are a lot more expensive, and so by dollar amount, they’re incredibly lucrative.”
The Electric lineup of brands also includes its flagship lingerie line, along with the Glas collection of glass toys, Pegasus strap-ons, plush Bondage Bearz, the Blue Line range of cock and ball torture gear, Rabbit Gear vibes and more.
“I feel like we definitely fill a lot of holes in this industry — no pun intended,” Goode jokes.
According to Rosen, Electric’s ability to fulfill retail needs with an abundant stock of items also helps the company stand out. He praises the wide assortment of products across multiple categories.
“Elan definitely has a very good sense of finding the gaps in the market and categories that are not fully developed,” Rosen says. “He can source and develop them and bring a brand to market in a way that brings the best value, and he does so efficiently. For instance, we don’t have 10,000 different styles of handcuffs; we only have three. We just make perennial bestselling items and make them in a way so that they’re continuously in stock and at a good value, not only for our retail clients but the end customer as well.”
Electric operates from multiple locations, including offices and warehouses in New York and Hong Kong, while the executive team works remotely from Miami and Los Angeles. The company’s versatile structure buffered it from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Rosen reflects with pride.
“I think we were able to serve our customers even better when the pandemic hit because we weren’t dealing with any restructuring,” he explains. “So we didn’t really skip a beat. Really, it was sort of like coming out of the financial crisis again.”
Rosen likens Electric’s business tactics to the strategizing in the movie “Moneyball,” starring Brad Pitt.
“In the movie, the coach of the Boston Red Sox ends up formulating a winning strategy, which was basically just using math,” he says. “That’s basically our approach. Coming at it from, as I like to call it, a ‘normal business’ direction — but with a simple mathematical strategy to compound our revenue growth each year continuously. That’s been the key to success in honing in, hitting the bullseye and then just repeating.”
Rosen credits his colleagues Goode and Hasner for helping the manufacturer expand into regions across North America and abroad.
“We have reached every global region that I believe is possible,” Rosen says. “Still, business could always be a lot more efficient. Not just with us but within the industry in general. There’s a lot of room for growth.”
Though constantly busy developing new products and expanding into new categories, the men of Electric Novelties try to balance the needs of their company with making time for their families and other aspects of their lives.
Rosen shares, “I work from home, so I don’t have unnecessary wasted time traveling to the office or standing around, chatting around the water cooler. I can really integrate work with my private life in the sense that I can do either at any time. I have the flexibility to do whatever I need to do in my life whenever I need to, including work.”
For Goode, that balance has shifted a bit since he became the new front man for Smash Mouth in March 2022.
“My life has changed a lot, but in some ways, it’s the same because I’m still doing my day job,” he says. “I can still go to trade shows, but on some nights and weekends, I might fly to Florida or Peru or Oregon and play a big show in front of like 10,000 people and then fly out the next day and go back and check my emails on Monday.”
The team’s flexible approach seems to be working. Summing up sentiments shared by his colleagues, Hasner expresses his appreciation for getting to help Electric grow and evolve.
“It has been incredibly rewarding to be part of a team that’s a collaborative effort built on a foundation of creativity, hard work and a commitment to excellence,” he says. “Every day, I’m proud to work alongside a team that is passionate about shaping the future of pleasure products and driving Electric Novelties to new heights.”
