From a dungeon to a store near you

Gay kink supplier Fort Troff partners with major manufacturer Doc Johnson to deliver kinkster-designed kink toys all across the US.

(Note: This story appears in the October 2023 issue of SE Magazine) 

For seven years, the whisper of a dimly-lit dungeon was reported across forums and between friends as a sure place gay men could meet and play. Word got out about one of the best-equipped play spaces in the US, and the Atlanta-based Fort Troff male-only party series grew to meet acclaim, according to Louis Ceruzzi, Fort Troff’s Founder and CEO. 

How did Ceruzzi’s dungeon anticipate the toys that men across the country would flock to play with? By playing with them, and being a player, himself. And when there were toys the boys wanted which his dungeon didn’t supply, because no one was making them yet, he set out himself to have them made. 

“We started seeing a need for toys that weren’t out there, which led to collaborating with various craftsmen and designers in the community,” recalls Ceruzzi, “and now have evolved into a store where we supply, hopefully, kinksters of all stripes with the tools they need to play.”

Now, Fort Troff is expanding again into a partnership with long-standing American sex toy manufacturer Doc Johnson, a big shift to B2B for the niche brand, which Ceruzzi admits that he wouldn’t have ventured into with anybody other than Doc Johnson.

“It’s always difficult when you start with a very passionate core audience and seek to grow,” he explains. “I would never want to lose the following and respect of the core base that is so passionate about Fort Troff, but we felt that Doc Johnson was absolutely the right big manufacturer to collaborate with, because they have been so helpful in the design of the Fort Troff products. They’ve really nurtured us from the beginning, so, for us, it was a natural decision.”

The co-brand between Fort Troff and Doc Johnson is already shipping out two lines representative of both company’s commitments to quality, style and function. The first is the Thruster series — dongs with a nearly two-inch thrust.

“The Thruster series is using technology that no one else in the adult industry is using,” beams Ceruzzi. “Most normal dick-sized toys don’t have anywhere near the amount of back and forth thrusts that ours does. But Doc Jonson’s in-house designer, Francois Hacquard, has taken it a step further and designed them with these incredible silicone cushy heads.

The other Fort Troff x Doc Johnson design in distribution is the Gunner System — “a revolution in fuck machine design.”

Ceruzzi details: “First of all, it has these ballast tanks on either side of the base you can fill with water, to weight and stabilize the machine, to where you can use it on a bed. Heretofore, every fuck machine that you ever tried to use on the bed scooted off the edge right at the moment that you needed it most. This is a major design innovation that we’re so proud of, we actually have a patent pending on it.”

But like the Thruster series, the device development doesn’t stop there.

“Francois and I have worked together to design compatible toys with functions like you’ve never seen in a fuck machine,” shares Ceruzzi. “A remote controls the speed of the back-and-forth thrust, while toggles on the top and the bottom control the toy. The toy vibrates and has an internal ridged spinning motion. This means that you’re getting rimmed, you’re getting vibed and you’re getting fucked, all at the same time.”

In essence, the collaboration between Fort Troff and Doc Johnson has been ultimately a design collaboration between Louis Ceruzzi and Francois Hacquard.

“I really enjoy working with Francois,” says Ceruzzi. “We both are gay and kinky, but we come at the design from different angles, and that makes a better product. I think we’ve got a lot of mutual respect in terms of what we both bring to the party, and he’s just as proud and as passionate about the products we’re getting ready to launch into the retail channel as I am.”

The Fort Troff x Doc Johnson collaboration is anticipating 14 new products which are set to launch this coming January at the ANME show, as well as another 10 coming for the summer show. 

“It’s kind of scary,” says Ceruzzi. “It’s like, the big league. Joe and Mary in Topeka, Kansas are going to be seeing Fort Troff product in the stores. How exciting is that? And I know, they’re going to love the products once they get them, because the quality and the design is better than anything out there.”

For more information, visit DocJohnson.com and FortTroff.com.