On February 15th, the Associated Press published an article about my catalogue business, The Vermont Country Store, offering what we call Intimate Solutions to our customers whose average age is around 60. The article focused on the controversy around these products, about the letters I received from customers and of the concerns some have had with the decision to offer these products in the first place.
Industry “experts” were contacted and a chorus of “They should stick to their brand image” poured forth. Brand image? Hell, I’m running a store, trying to meet the needs of my customers, not worry about what corporate types think I should do. My shopkeepers’ intuition told me there was a need for these products by our customers, and it turned out I was right. This, along with my willingness to talk about sex by “older folks,” certainly got the old party lines humming.
NPR’s weekly show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me was hilarious in their treatment of our offerings and I’m still chuckling. Bloggers are having a field day. In the blog Alas Jeff Fecke wrote, “…turns out that the people who are buying the manual typewriters are also having sex — and it’s less embarrassing to order your vibrator from the Vermont Country Store than to take a trip into town to Sex World. But just because you’re wearing old-fashioned pajamas, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have a libido. I’m rather cheered by the fact that a catalog aimed at the over-fifty set is aware that over-fifty doesn’t mean over intimacy.” Bravo!
Our catalogue is called The Voice of The Mountains. When my father, Vrest Orton, started it in 1946, he offered up his opinions alongside the merchandise and we still do. The greatest thing our customers have in common is getting older. To that end, we have adopted the cause of Aging Well and are promoting a discussion with and among these customers, many who are elderly, many who are adult children of elders. Aging Well, as I see it, is about promoting a cultural shift on two fronts.
One is to challenge Ageism – the negative image of older folks held by younger ones – and to demonstrate the tremendous mutual benefit to both groups of changing that outlook. It galled me to hear a reporter covering President Obama’s inauguration comment on Bush the elder as he was walking to his seat, saying he was really showing his age as if he had one foot in the grave. Come on! President Bush Senior demonstrated great energy and determination. So what if he was walking slowly and with a cane. He was going to get there by God! I admired him. CNN ought to rap that reporter’s knuckles.
Two is to uncover and promote, through conversations with and among our customers, moving away from the image of narrowing-down life as we age to one of expanding life. The old ideal of growing up, working, retiring and dying, is itself dying. When I read that retirement communities in Arizona – minimum age 55 and no kids allowed – blame their increasing vacancy rates on the economy, I say they have their heads in the sand. It’s not just the economy-it’s also a sign of a changing culture that I hope will see the benefits of multi-generational communities.
My narrow generation, those born in the winds-of, and during World War II, (I in 1941), are the forward scouts into the cultural territory of our following brothers and sisters, the Boomers. We venture into the darkness of aging with Ray-O-Vac flashlights, but the Boomers are coming with Xenon, whose white glare will illuminate the new culture of aging.
Okay, so even though I and my sons do not like reading complaints from customers about products to do with sex I have to ask them to rip that page out of the catalogue if they don’t care to look at it. Yes, I offered these products because I had the merchant’s sense that many of our customers would rather buy them from us instead of, as the blogger said, running down to Sex World, or visiting some uncomfortable web site. And they do.
But, again, it’s not about sex. It’s about more deeply understanding the changing culture around aging well through a conversation with those who know a thing or two about the subject. The culture around aging needs to change and we aim to help do something about it. If, along the way, we bump into taboo subjects that make some uncomfortable, we will take them on in our characteristic no-nonsense, practical Vermont way.
Lyman Orton, Proprietor
The Vermont Country Store
Weston, Vermont
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