(Note: This story appears in the February 2022 issue of SE Magazine)

Perhaps it should be no surprise given how adult retail revolves around intimacy, but two of adultmart’s longest-tenured employees — Debi Yoskey and Jill Arstone — thrive on the relationships the business provides.

Debi Yoskey is approaching 33 years at GVA-TWN. After working in a pizza shop as a teenager, her mother, who was the editor of Connection magazine, which was part of the company, got her a job there filing. From there, she moved into the video warehouse, fulfilling orders and doing shipping. That evolved into a buying position, while still handling orders, and her job continued to evolve from there to her current role as an integral part of the company’s leadership.

Jill Arstone’s career path started when she worked at a GVA-TWN-owned non-adult video store in 1992. After graduating high school, Arstone didn’t know what she wanted to do, so she went to a community college for a year. Those mainstream video stores closed in 2005, and GVA-TWN owner Rondee Kamins brought her to the warehouse, where she picked and shipped orders and swept floors. Arstone’s responsibilities continued to grow from there into the many hats that Arstone, Yoskey, and Kamins all wear today.

SE’s Larry Kaplan spoke with Yoskey and Arstone about what’s kept them humming and invested in the adult industry.

SE: Debi, what do you like best about this industry and your job?

YOSKEY: Hands down, I love the people. In this office, we’re beyond friendships; we’ve all grown up here together. I was 19 when I started. Rondee, Jill, and I are all around the same age; we’ve all had births, deaths, weddings; we’ve had it all. We cry a lot; if one of us cries, we all cry. The relationships with my co-workers really transcend anything. You don’t just go anywhere and have relationships like you do in this business. And that includes some of the people we’ve done business with for years. Everybody kind of grew up together, even though some may have a few years on us — old-school names like Howard Levine of Vivid Video and Chris Mann, who owned Video Team. It was hard to get somebody to take my calls when I was young. But Chris and Howard did. Howard and I maintained a friendship until he, unfortunately, passed a few years ago.

I’ve also enjoyed the opportunities to travel, meet people, and do things. One of the highlights was in 2006 when we had a store grand opening in Eastlake, Ohio, with a month of events and brought in Jenna Jameson. I put a lot of work into it, and it was such a huge, exciting time. That was also our first store where we hired an architect, decorator and made it much more boutique-y. Since then, we’ve modeled all of our stores after that.

SE: How has the industry changed since you started?

YOSKEY: One of the most significant changes is that some people today forget where they came from. There’s not a lot of respect for the people that have been doing this forever. Everybody thinks they’ll come in and make a quick buck. And everybody thinks that they’ve got the next best thing. People hop around from company to company and think that people will follow them because there’s a business relationship. There’s no loyalty; everything feels like fly by night. I think we’re way past the day where your word means much of anything. People come and go so fast and move around; it’s a revolving door.

SE: Jill, what does your job consist of?

ARSTONE: Debi, Rondee, and I work together to ensure everything gets done. Buying, merchandising, whatever anybody needs help with, we do it. We love to just tackle things. So if it needs doing, let’s cross it off our list and move on.

SE: What do you like best about this industry and your job?

ARSTONE: I laugh a lot. You know, people are funny, and people are people. There are so many things. We find a lot of laughter throughout the day. I like the growth, and we’ve been working a lot on our own brand, which has been really exciting.

The job itself, the fact that I wear a lot of these hats, keeps it fresh, keeps it moving. It’s not just not filling my time with buying. I like the fact that we jump in different directions every day. I think we’ve moved forward a lot considering what we’ve been dealing with over the last few years, COVID-related. And like Debi said, these friendships are priceless. And we do drink a lot of Tito’s Vodka.

Larry Kaplan has been the Legal Correspondent for ED Publications for 21 years. Mr. Kaplan is a broker in the sale and purchase of adult retail stores and adult nightclubs and the Executive Director of the ACE of Michigan adult nightclub state trade association. Contact Larry Kaplan at 313-815-3311 or email larry@kaplanstoresales.com.