Joel Tucker was a nice college kid headed for academia. Then he discovered S&M sex toys – and became an underground icon

"Being an online business in the years before the World Wide Web had been invented meant that you were communicating almost exclusively through text. These were newsgroups, e-mail, FTP sites, and so our catalog didn’t have pictures in it,” says Joel Tucker, the JT in internet sex toy manufacturer and distributor JT’s Stockroom.

“The descriptions of the product had to be very clear and easily understandable. And also, they had to give people a sense that whoever was on the other end of this was a reputable, honest businessperson, because this was also the early days of e-commerce, and the idea of sending someone a credit card on the Internet was very strange. Nothing much happened at first.”

JT looks and sounds a lot like a university professor, albeit one certain undergrads go all crushy on. Jacket, no tie at his Sunset office desk on a Friday afternoon. Dark eyes serious and piercing, Tucker would fit the bill nearly to the point of cliché were it not for the purple Teletubbie on the shelf just over Tucker’s left shoulder. Or the Oscar Wilde action figure, still in its packaging – mint condition. Click here to read the full article