Muffs & Cuffs

What Muffs & Cuffs is

Muffs & Cuffs is a wholesale distributor of adult toys that drop ships orders for online adult toy stores. The home page calls it "the only wholesale adult toy distributor that isn't trying to compete with you" and says its main goal is for the reseller's online adult toy store to succeed. It sells wholesale only, and a note to visitors sends anyone buying for personal use to a separate retail site. The buyer is an online adult toy store or another reseller; the pages describe no service for video sites, cam operators or paysites.

The site ties the business closely to Williams Trading Co. The vendor notice names "WILLIAMS TRADING CO. and MUFFS & CUFFS" together as the companies that enforce branded pricing rules, and the freight notice on the Muffs & Cuffs home page is written as a letter from Williams Trading to its customers. The pages do not spell out the corporate relationship between the two names.

What it sells an operator

The storefront menu runs through dongs and dildos, vibrators, products for men, anal toys, bondage toys, lubes and lotions, videos and DVDs, novelties and games, condoms and product images. The top navigation adds sections for services, MAP, data feed, catalog, drop shipping and resources.

The services page lists what a customer gets: price lists, automated UPS shipping and tracking, daily database updating and daily invoicing. The home page adds instant access to catalog images of the whole range, instant access to new products, and an online order system that the page says simplifies a store's customer service tasks. It also says the company has all the price lists a reseller needs to set up an adult toy store, and that the site is published and maintained solely for its customers.

Order handling runs from the reseller's own system. The services page says orders are imported directly from the reseller's database into the company's UPS computers, which it presents as the fastest available shipping with the fewest errors. The reseller knows the status of each customer order within 24 hours. The daily database update lets the store download shipping, product and customer information, so a store can pull tracking and stock data into its own records.

Invoicing is daily, and the page says this makes bookkeeping easier to reconcile. A matching invoice number is written into the shipping area of the reseller's database, so each shipment can be sorted and matched against the wholesale invoice. A PDF of the daily invoice is not available online. The services page also offers an example of the packing slip the company puts in each shipment, so a store can see what its customer receives in the box.

The site prints no prices. Price lists are available to customers, and the pages state no fees or order minimums.

The brands and the MAP policy

The vendor notice is the most detailed page on the site, and its subject is minimum advertised price. It says the company strictly enforces the MAP policies set by its branded-vendor partners to protect their product imagery, trademarks and pricing. Each brand's MAP is based on the retail price that brand publishes, so the rule differs from partner to partner. A customer may not advertise a MAP product below the designated MAP price, but the policy does not touch the price a reseller actually charges: every online reseller stays free to set its own retail price. The company reserves the right to review a reseller's compliance at its sole discretion, and a customer found advertising below MAP is no longer eligible to buy or resell that brand's line. Under its appointed distribution agreements, resellers must sign a MAP agreement. The policy covers internet sales in North America, including Canada, and internationally, except in countries where such policies are prohibited by law.

The notice also sets Amazon rules. Brands on its restricted list cannot be offered or listed on the Amazon Marketplace by a reseller, and for those lines internet and brick-and-mortar resellers need prior approval from the brand before creating or selling any product listing.

The brand list doubles as a picture of the range. Lines marked fully restricted on Amazon include Aneros, Bathmate, B Vibe, Fleshlight, LELO, TENGA, Satisfyer, Dame, Kink by Doc Johnson, Icon Brands, Perfect Fit, Pjur, Swiss Navy, Sportsheets, Tantus and Je Joue. California Exotics is restricted by ASIN, Cloud 9 Novelties needs a form for e-commerce approval, and lines sold with partial restriction under MAP pricing include Magic Wand, the Vibratex Hitachi Wand, SVAKOM, Jimmyjane, Bubble Love and Sola. The fully restricted list carries an update date of January 2020, and a few entries carry older years, so the list shows its age.

Shipping costs and other terms

The home page carries a freight notice headed as new guidance from UPS and FedEx for 2015. It tells customers that both carriers were moving to dimensional weight, a billing method based on a package's length, width and height, and that charges on all air and ground shipments would be set by the greater of actual weight and dimensional weight. Before that change, the notice says, dimensional charges applied only to certain package sizes and to priority shipments. It links to the UPS and FedEx freight calculators. The same page reproduces older USPS rules on the renamed Priority Mail Express service. The pages do not say how carrier charges are billed through to a reseller.

Beyond MAP and Amazon resale, the site publishes no trading terms: no return or refund policy, payment methods, credit terms, contract length or setup cost, and no rule on which products a store may sell or how it checks its customers' ages.

Getting started and support

Ordering starts with an account. The header carries Log In and Sign Up links, and the home page points visitors to a click-through page for information on ordering or setting up an account. The site does not name the documents a reseller supplies or how long approval takes.

No phone number, email address, support hours or named contact appears on these pages, and no shopping platform, plugin or API is named; the data exchange is described as database downloads and imports, so a store on a particular platform has to confirm the fit with the company.

Company and track record

The home page says the company ships for many of the oldest and most popular adult toy stores on the web, without naming any of them, and it refers to appointed distribution agreements with the brands it carries. No founding year, address or headcount is given.

Who it suits

Muffs & Cuffs suits an online adult toy store that wants a wholesale distributor to ship its orders through UPS, wants daily order, shipping and product data it can load into its own database, and wants a daily invoice that lines up with its shipments. It fits a reseller that already works inside branded MAP rules and plans to list major toy brands on its own site rather than on Amazon. It fits less well for a buyer who needs published prices, return terms or payment terms before applying, or a seller whose plan depends on Amazon resale of restricted lines.

Its strength is the daily, database-level exchange of orders, tracking and invoices with the reseller's own system, which keeps a store's records and its supplier's shipments aligned without manual re-entry.