Shaw’s closed; Fresh Market opened. Sweet.
Depot Liquors is gone; another package store will take its place. No big deal.
But Bedroom Matters is shutting its doors tomorrow. That is very bad news for thousands of Westport women — plus their partners.
Bedroom Matters is a boutique across from the railroad station — a few doors down from Depot Liquors, in fact. It sells the usual: lingerie, massage candles, rhinestone pasties, Kama Sutra honey dust, vibrators, Bad Girl cuffs.
Margaret Wagner
In 2 years, it’s developed a loyal following. “Our customers are amazing,” says founder Margaret Wagner.
But rents are high. So tomorrow (Friday) is her last day as a brick-and-mortar retailer. All merchandise is 50 percent off. A final event tomorrow night will clear everything off the shelves.
Customers — many of whom thank Wagner for spicing up their sex lives and/or saving their marriages — need not despair. She will continue to sell her products — including bedding, intimate objects, and educational and erotic books — online.
Her classes (intimacy, lap-dancing — “anything fun and sexy,” Wagner says) and her Sensual Circles women’s groups will be held in several area locations.
“We have 2,500 women on our mailing list,” Wagner says. Places like Arogya and Soleil Toile are very interested in having our events at their place.”
Kama Sutra massage oil is $19.99 on the Bedroom Matters website.
Wagner says she is “passionate about one thing: living a sensual life.”
But sex, she says, “has become an action, a verb. Its soul is lost as it gets tracked through the mud of everything from pornography to Cougar Town.”
She founded Bedroom Matters to “reintroduce sex and intimacy as a core of our being. (I wanted) to build a platform for sensuality and sexuality that is beautiful, respectful, fun and intimate.”
She calls her store “an expensive tool to help women — and couples — with relationships and intimacy.” It’s time now, she says, to move more toward the educational side of the business. And to sell products in an environment with no overhead.
As Shoeless Joe Jackson says in “Field of Dreams”: “If you build it, they will come.”
(Wagner also blogs. Click here to read “Margaret’s Bedroom.”)
This book includes a box to check after completing each of the 101 places.
I stepped into Bedroom Matters in 2008 and had a great conversation with Margaret while I picked up naughty Ad-Libs as stocking stuffers along with other unmentionables that were very well received. The Lap Dance blog soon was one of my favorite posts in 2008: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-ann-west/lap-dance-for-santa-and-o_b_152953.html
So while I write about progressive politics, polls etc. I have the most fun writing about the unique, and Bedroom Matters is truly one of a kind, the good news, you can find them on-line.
Ah–I loved that store! It was a wonderful addition to Westport–a one-of-a-kind shop in a town of chains. I wish Margaret all the best.