A small intro about John Frew and Andrew Broczek, the two engines running Peaches and Cream

In 2001, EPL Group, combining the force of John Raymond Frew (who owns The Grinder-Gay adult store in K’Rd Auckland) and Andrew John Broczek, bought the business from Peterson.

John Frew (Takapuna, Auckland) and Andrew Broczek (Ellerslie, Auckland) started purchasing more sex shops in NZ after their combined efforts of having 3 stores.

In the beginning, it wasn’t consolidated under the brand of Peaches and Cream. The chain had different brands, with the biggest one being Erox. The branding of all stores to Peaches and Cream occurred slowly during the years, and it all came to a successful stop in 2012 (except The Grinder, which notably only catered to the gay community).

In 2014, the pair also incorporated Xoom Distribution into it. It acts as another leg of the business which operates as a wholesale supplier, utilising the purchasing power of Peaches and Cream and its distribution system.

In the past, they’d made an attempt with Turkana, however that allegedly didn’t work out well.

John Frew tried another venture, which essentially merged into Peaches and Cream activity.

In 2013, they closed a video retail business, this time as a trio alongside Robin Keith Osborne. Currently, Andrew Broczek is holding another company, known as ‘Lockerrom Marketing’, in partnership with a Canadian company owned by Roberto Ama. They used to sell a product similar to Viagra under the website Jungle Juice, though at the moment, it’s not available.

How we test everything and conclusions

Using the WaybackMachine from 2004, we could analyze the changes that users exhibited when it came to purchasing sex toys in regards to preference and general behavior.

This is the first image we managed to find – an excerpt to when they had one store with this name at Christchurch, as well as a vivid green site color:

A few months later, P&C redesigned their site so that the user was brought to a catalogue page offering to buy Paris Hilton’s full sex-tape. The full video, titled ‘1 Night in Paris’, was later published without Hilton’s consent – an action that awarded her $400,000 in court.

The male-oriented site mainly offered magazines and DVDs.

Then, in 2007, Peaches and Cream become more ‘masochist’, whilst offering more boobies for the desire of heterosexual men. Prices were through the roof seeing as the competition was very slow, with only a few retail shops providing the online experience. Interestingly enough, 10 years ago, P&C also accepted Barter Card.

The title “New Zealand’s Adult Mega Store” was later taken by Adult Toy Mega Store. Funnily enough, 10 years later, they were sending other competitors in the industry letters from lawyers to stop them from using the term “Adult Toy Megastore”.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that they added an option for the Chinese language, which was located on the right-hand side towards the bottom. However, this feature was never actually available. So, we know that Peaches and Cream noticed the growing market and interest of Chinese speakers in New Zealand, but for some reason neglected to properly work on the idea.

In 2008, the Christchurch store had to remove their entire range of chocolate body points due to the contamination of melamine, which was said to have been inserted into the products via the Chinese manufacturer.

In 2010, Peaches and Cream decided on another re-design, this time with an orange color. It did, however, still display naked ladies on the front page.

The store moved to a new place not far from the old one in Christchurch. Unfortunately, judging by its appearance on Google Street View, it seems that both locations were damaged during Christchurch’s large earthquake. Today, they’ve settled at 586 Colombo Street.

During 2010 and towards the end of 2011, Peaches and Cream brand expanded beyond the South Island boundaries, opening shops in Dunedin, Wellington, Petone, Hamilton, and Auckland. In 2011, they introduced another logo and redesign for their site. This time, it had a more modern look, calling for a wider audience and holding a special offer for online users only.

The transformation from a men-only site to a mixed-audience site finally occurred in 2012, with the utilization of the well-known pink color and a nice logo. Other features that were added are the Facebook page, as well as the range of “Fifty Shades of Grey” sex toys (based on the book, considering the movie was released 3 years later). Since 2012, the site hasn’t changed much, and it’s safe to say that both men and women are browsing through and purchasing from sex toy sites (in New Zealand, at least).

Also, the homepage is more soft and clean-looking in regards to the layout, as opposed to the chauvinist and vulgar look back from 2004-2010. We can only guess that moving from a corner shop to a mainstream shop must’ve pushed the owners to a softer line, where people should have no guilt in going inside their shops. Another big influencer would be Google, who imposed many restrictions on sex toy sellers. If they wished to promote their sites and stores using Google AdWords or SEO, they were enforced to avoid nudity and pornographic content, thus impacting on the general layout of many sites.

Another thing that we won’t be expecting to see today is Peaches and Cream advertising on Grabone. 6 years ago, they were offering a $50 voucher for $25. Not bad, but the deal only had a total of 42 purchases. This can be contributed to the fact that Grabone has only been around since 2010, and had a low volume of customers at the time of this promo.