30 years of Mister B

Mister B, one of Europe’s leading names in the fetish scene, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, and brand manager Tony de Wilde talked Paul Smith through some of the recent changes at the company…

Just about everyone in the industry knows Mister B and its products, and so do many of your customers. In the words of Tony de Wilde, Mister B brand manager: “If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community and/or have a kink or fetish and are between the ages of about 20 and 65, the chances that you’ve heard of Mister B are fairly high. You either know us from the many events or LGBTQ+ initiatives we have supported and sponsored, or you have worn our gear during a fetish party or play session.”

Since being bought by Nelson Sousa da Cunha from founder Wim Bos in 2017, Mister B has seen numerous changes, but before we get on to them, perhaps we should go back to the start…

“Our company was founded in 1994 by the original Mister B: Wim Bos,” Tony told me. “Wim had a lot of experience in retail and in the gay scene when he started his own fetish shop in Amsterdam. His goal was to make fetish more visible and accessible. He did this by creating a store with big open windows so theoutside world could clearly see what was going on inside. A revolutionary idea for that time!”

Tony continued: “On March 2nd, 1994, the Mister B flagship store opened on the Warmoesstraat in Amsterdam, the then-famous gay leather street of the Dutch capital. The Mister B store in Berlin, Germany opened in 2000. In 2005, having outgrown the shop on Nollendorfstrasse, it relocated to its new premises on Motzstrasse. December 2014 saw the opening of Mister B’s only franchise in the heart of Antwerp, Belgium’s second largest city and fetish capital.

“After 23 years, Wim Bos said goodbye to the company and in July 2017 Nelson Sousa da Cunha, marketing manager at the company for six years and a diehard fetishist himself, became the new owner of Mister B. In 2018 there was another big change when our iconic Amsterdam flagship store relocated after 25 years. We moved to a beautiful new store at Prinsengracht 192, next to one of the main canals in the heart of Amsterdam.”

The Mister B website is now an important part of the business – it’s clear, modern, and available in English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish – but Tony was clear that bricks-and-mortar retail remains vital: “Mister B sells a wide range of quality fetish gear and intimate toys, but we also offer an experience,” he explained. “From the moment you walk into one of our stores, our friendly staff are happy to help you, even if you are just browsing or if you want to know more about certain products and their potential pleasure factor.”

Something new and different

I wondered if moving out of Amsterdam’s Red-Light District was a reflection on the more mainstreaming of adult products in the last 20 years, with sex toys all over Amazon and appearing in many supermarkets. “The move enabled us to try something new and different with the look and feel of the shop,” Tony said. “Since the very beginning, Mister B has been active in supporting the – primarily, but not exclusively, queer –fetish community and we want to continue this in the coming years. Whether it’s in Amsterdam and Berlin, or in parts of the world where being a member of the LGBTQ+ community is still an issue. As a growing company now with a total of 25 employees, we’ve decided to move to a new office space in Amsterdam, which is a dynamic environment which really benefits our creative process and workflow for all our departments.”

Curious as to Tony’s role as brand manager for Mister B, I asked how his cog fitted into the company’s gearbox. He responded: “As the brand manager, my job is very diverse. I’m responsible for anything that has to do with our brand. Along with the entire marketing team, we are working on the concepts for new brands, designing the packaging, creating content for both on and offline marketing, organising events and much more. It’s important to understand Mister B is very active within the LGBTQ+ community, with supporting organisations throughout Europe and hosting our own parties and events.”

This reminded me of the Skin Two model, where Balls and Expos complemented the latex clothing and accessory brand. Given the target market, maybe Balls would be a thing for Mister B? Anyway, Tony finished: “Lastly, I’m also the editor-in-chief of our glossy fetish magazine, Mister B WINGS. Here we highlight diverse stories of people within the queer and fetish community, as well as educate on sex, kink, and lifestyle.”

Another Skin Two parallel for those who remember that company’s popular magazine and yearbook publications.

Everybody wants a fuck machine

Our discussion moved on to Mister B’s retail side. I remembered a shop-in-shop concept in a (now sadly defunct) London gay store. Was this still ‘a thing’ for Mister B?

“Next to our three brand stores in Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Berlin we have two other retail concepts,” Tony replied. “Starting with our Mister B Concept Stores, which is part of another brick-andmortar retailer. The hosting store has a similar look and feel to the brand stores and offers the same customer experience. With a total assortment of Mister B concepts combined with other brands. As of now we have four concept stores, in Cologne, Copenhagen, Dortmund, and Frankfurt.”

Tony continued: “Our third retail concept is our Shop-in-Shop concept, where the brick-and-mortar retailer offers a good selection of Mister B brands and products allocated to a specific part of the store, which features the Mister B branding and marketing. At the moment we’ve around 13 Shop-in-Shops in several different cities all over Europe from Poznan Poland, Manchester in the UK, to Madrid in Spain. Having these retail concepts helps us really understand the end consumer. We get a lot of inspiration and feedback from our colleagues at the stores about new product ideas.”

Sticking with Mister B as a retailer for one last question – there is more to the Mister B story! – I asked about the website and how it integrates with the wider business.

“Next to our retail concepts and our wholesale department of course we also offer our products online at MisterB.com where we’ve a large selection of our products,” Tony said. “Our own brands as well as a huge selection of third-party brands. Over the years we’ve put a lot of effort into designing and producing our own brands. From our latest fantasy dildo brand Hellhound – a colourful selection of fantasy inspired dildos – to Mister B SERVE, a gender-neutral line of leather harnesses.

“However, our main product focus is our immense Mister B leather, rubber and neoprene lines, our BDSM toys, and of course our lubricant collection with all kinds of Mister B branded lubes. Our focus this upcoming year will be expanding on those lines and making sure we keep the designs fresh and new.” I recognised many of the brands Mister B distribute as I browsed the website, including Rocks-Off, Colt, and Fleshlight, but asked if I was missing the ‘hidden treasures’ in Mister B’s offering. Were the jewelled plugs ETO’s Mystery Shopper’s was always commenting on something the gay market has embraced?

“We offer and distribute a lot of well-known brands, including F-machine, Oxballs, E-stim, Topped Toys and many more,” Tony said. “We’ve some steel products for sure, though we don’t notice a big trend in those lines. Some things that are trending at the moment are chastity devices, electro-play and, since the pandemic, everybody wants a fuck machine.”

The most socially-distanced of threesome options for the spit-roast fan – it makes perfect sense. For the straight market (with, admittedly, some disposable income) as well as the (typically child-free) gay scene.

The spirit of what we do

30 years in business is quite an achievement, and Mister B will certainly be celebrating it.

“We’ll do this in many ways, starting with our presence at Darklands Antwerp, a huge fetish festival,” Tony said.

“It’s where we’ll also release the 16th issue of our Mister B WINGS magazine. I don’t want to spoil any surprises, so I’ll just say stay tuned for all the 30th anniversary festivities by following us on social media or keeping an eye on MisterB.com.

“At Mister B we really are a family after these 30 years. Some of us have been working at the company for several decades, like for instance our back-office hero, Max, who is celebrating his 25th year with the company this year. I think this reflects well on the spirit of what we do and how Mister B has developed over the years. We’ve not lost sight of what makes the business special.”

And where does Tony see Mister B in 2054 – 30 years from now?

“I can’t wait to see for myself!”

When I think of Mister B, I always picture the first time I saw Domestic Partners’ Ass Midget, which I think was in the old Amsterdam store. But I also think of the firm’s trade show stands: compact compared to some, but elegant, efficient, and focused. That’s the Mister B I expect to move forward, even as some ‘exclusively gay’ products of the past expand their potential customer base by finding favour with an increasingly open-minded/open-buttocked non-LGBTQ+ market. I’m not qualified to speculate on Mister B’s future, but if it’s anything like the last 30 years, it’ll feature understanding its customers’ changing wants and needs, and adapting quickly to better serve them.

Perhaps some typically gay-focused lines expand into the larger ‘all men’ market (butt-play being a lot more mainstream now than it was in 1994) and if so, I’d expect Mister B to further broaden its profile as a kink or fetish brand more than a specifically LGBTQ+ one. Many stocked lines already have ‘crossover appeal’ and it’d be a mistake to pigeonhole Mister B as an exclusively ‘niche lifestyle’ (I mean by raw numbers, not validity) focused business.

That said, the company’s beating heart is still a leather one, with an alluring gloss and probably chrome spikes.