Matt, the founder and main guy of Tickle, and I were recently talking and I thought it would be a great idea to do an interview with him so people understand a little more about what Tickle is about and why they should support this awesome company.  Matt has been nothing but helpful when I asked questions about the toys I was sent to review and I know he would do the same with his customers.

On to the interview!

Here's a glance at how Tickle's website is designed. Simple, classy and easy to use.

Who are you?

Well, I’m a 23 year old bisexual from North Carolina. I went to Guilford College (go Quakers!) in Greensboro, NC for 3 years before leaving to start Tickle. Before Tickle, I was a documentary photographer and curator of Vewd.org (I had a Wikipedia article, but it seems someone finally realized I wasn’t important enough and removed it). I’m very open and always welcome people to contact me, my e-mail address is mattblalock@myticklespot.com or ask me anything. http://www.formspring.me/mattblalock

Why did you start Tickle?
Everyone asks me why I would get into such a crowded space, but that’s part of why I did it. There are many companies that offer the same products as Tickle, but they don’t support their customers. They just sell things. They stick it up on the shelf and let you buy what you want and you leave. If it doesn’t work or you don’t like it, too bad. I didn’t like that. It didn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy about buying something so intimate, so personal. I decided I’d be as good as any to solve that problem. I can’t say I’ve solved it just yet, but we’re very close. I work every day to make Tickle better, one day (hopefully soon!) I think we’ll have our perfect toy store.

It seems like you guys stock higher end toys or just nicer toys in general.  This makes me so happy since there are many shops that carry all kinds of toys with phthalates and chemicals.  What inspired you to decide not to carry these types of toys?
We do stock the best of the best. We made a decision early on that we would not present something that could be unsafe for our customers. We’ve researched every ingredient and every material for every product we offer. If it could be unsafe, based on our research, we will not offer it. As an extension of that, we have a policy regarding complaints. We track every complaint we receive about a product and monitor the reviews very closely. If a product continues to make our customers unhappy, we will stop selling it immediately.

What’s it like being the little guy trying to compete with the big stores?
It’s incredibly exhilarating! We’re competing with companies whose daily advertising budget exceeds our annual budget. Think about that, they spend more in a day than we could in a year! Needless to say, we must get creative. While it is exhilarating, it can be equally exhausting; we know we can offer amazing service and products to people and we wish we could offer it to far more, sadly we’re reaching just a small number of people. On the bright side, our customers are very happy and we’re happy to have them!

Your affiliate program is wonderfully designed and is probably one of the best I have seen.  What, according to you, makes your program really appealing to bloggers?
Thank you! We think the best thing about the program is the support we can provide. We don’t just let everyone into our program; for every application we accept, we deny 10. We do this intentionally so that we can support our Partners like a family. We’ll create banners for our Partners, help optimize their websites, and in one case, we even completely rebuilt a website for a Partner. Plus, we do offer very good commissions!

So there you have it.  If you haven’t heard of Tickle or have just passed them up until now, I would highly encourage you to check them out.  If you click the banner below it will take you to the main page.  I’m not even putting my affiliate code in so that it doesn’t appear that I’m doing this for commissions – I just really, really like Tickle and want them to succeed.