The first week of September 2026 brought two personnel items that together sketch how the pleasure-products distribution layer is turning over. On September 1, XBIZ reported that Bob Pyne Sr., founder of Williams Trading Co., died at 88. On September 4, Electric Novelties announced it had hired industry veteran Rob Phaneuf as vice president of sales and marketing, effective immediately.

Why It Matters

Distribution is the least-covered and most decisive layer of this industry. Brands get the press; distributors decide which products actually reach the roughly independent retail base that still moves enormous volume in the US. Pyne's death closes out the founding generation of that layer — the operators who built wholesale infrastructure when the category had no legal protection, no payment processing and no mainstream retail path. The businesses they built are now second- and third-generation family firms competing with brand-owned direct wholesale and Amazon. Phaneuf's hire points at where the margin is going. He was explicitly recruited for private-label and original product development through factory relationships — which is a distributor deciding it would rather own products than move someone else's. That is the same vertical-integration logic playing out across the sector this year, and it compresses the traditional brand-distributor split from the bottom up. Watch whether Electric's category expansion lands in men's wellness and anal wellness, the two segments where private label has the clearest runway right now.

Pyne founded Williams Trading more than 55 years ago in Pennsauken, New Jersey, building it into one of the country's leading pleasure-products distributors. His career started with projector movies and film reels, at the point when the adult entertainment business was barely a business at all. "Bob was there at the very beginning of the adult entertainment industry, standing alongside fellow pioneers in the fight for equality, free speech and fair treatment for a business that was not yet widely accepted," the company said in a statement. "The battles he fought and the ground he broke helped pave the way for the thriving industry we know today." He was inducted into the StorErotica Hall of Fame in 2019. Pyne had stepped back from day-to-day operations while remaining closely involved; his six children took on leadership across warehouse operations, e-commerce and purchasing.

Phaneuf's move is the forward-looking half. He arrives at Electric Novelties with more than 25 years across sales, product development, marketing, packaging and retail strategy — most recently as director of sales and marketing at XR Brands, and before that more than 20 years with Pipedream Products. At Electric he will oversee sales strategy, team development, key account growth and expansion into new product categories, plus original product development and private-label work through Electric's manufacturing partnerships. What drew him, he said, was manufacturing access: "What really drew me to this opportunity is the strength of Electric's factory relationships and what we can create through them. The infrastructure and connections are already there. Now it's about unlocking their full potential." Electric Novelties senior sales executive Adam Hasner said Phaneuf "knows how to connect with customers, build excitement around products and turn ideas into business."

Sources

Update — 2026-09-07

Initial entry — story first created.