Adam & Eve (business)
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| Private | |
| Industry | Sex industry |
| Founded | North Carolina, United States (1970) |
| Founder | Phil Harvey and Tim Black |
| Headquarters | Hillsborough, North Carolina, United States |
| Products | Sex toys, personal lubricants, pornographic films, condoms |
| Parent | PHE, Inc. |
| Website | http://www.adameve.com |
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Footnotes / references |
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Adam & Eve is a conglomerate company that sells sex toys, vibrators, condoms, and lingerie, as well as funding non-profit social marketing organizations that address issues such as population growth, disease control and sex education in developing countries. In 2006, it was described by Reuters as one of the handful of studios that dominate the U.S. porn industry. The company is the largest mail-order distributor of condoms, sex toys, and erotica in the United States. Founder Phil Harvey has been called "one of the most influential figures in the American sex industry today". Its parent company, PHE Inc., is the largest private employer in Hillsborough, North Carolina, where its headquarters are situated.
Adam & Eve was founded in 1970 by physician Paul Mueller and Phil Harvey. It started as a small storefront on one of Chapel Hill, North Carolina's main streets, selling condoms and lubricants. It soon became a mail-order catalog selling contraceptives through non-medical channels.
Harvey, having just returned from India as a part of the CARE pre-school feeding program, concluded that poor family planning was the source of many social problems. While still a graduate student at the University of North Carolina's School of Public Health, Harvey and Mueller conceived Adam & Eve to fund a non-profit organization in hopes of using the profits to finance family-planning programs in developing countries,. With a Ford Foundation fellowship, the two men devised a plan to use social marketing in the U.S., and with university consent, they began writing witty ad copy ("What will you get her this Christmas -- pregnant?") and advertising condoms in the mail. After running ads in 300 of the largest U.S. college newspapers, the orders started and did not stop. Though selling condoms via the mail was in violation of the (not overturned judicially in its entirety until 1972), Harvey and Mueller knew the law was rarely enforced. Success ensued, and the men began to see a profit, stating, "The mail-order condom market was just sitting there waiting for somebody," recalls Harvey. "We'd sit down at the end of the week and pay our bills and I'd say, 'There seems to be some money leftover here.' That's about how much we knew about business. He also gives authors a chance to write for his videos."
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