Entrepreneur Whips Up Bondage Gear for Vegans

SALT LAKE CITY — A vegan's life is anything but easy. What to eat, what to drink, what to wear.

What to use to tie up, blindfold, gag and whip your partner.

A young Salt Lake City entrepreneur is working to take the "cow" out of cower and make bondage play safe for vegans with a line of animal-friendly, cruelty-free human restraints, collars, harnesses, whips and belts.

Eric Ward, who runs the business online, crafts custom-made gear on request out of a "sinthetic" micro fiber called Lorica that looks, feels and acts like leather.

"One of the major aspects of the fetish of leather is the look of it. It just looks so sexy," Ward said.

The online store's dedication to vegan products earned it a spot on the "compassionate retailer" list of the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Ward, who has not eaten or used products derived from animals in four years, runs the online store as part of Reach Out Publications, a company that makes buttons and T-shirts for activist and nonprofit groups in Utah.

Ward, 22, insists that his main motive is to make life easier for vegans. He volunteers with the Utah Animal Rights Coalition and helped publish a guide to local vegetarian restaurants.

Reach Out also runs a vegetarian food-buying club.

But he admits that a personal interest in leather fetishes and bondage also played a role in the creation of his online store.

"I like helping open people's sexuality," he said.

His career as a PETA-sanctioned erotica outfitter started with a fateful trip to Europe, where he discovered a wealth of affordable vegan condoms.

When he returned to the United States, he decided to start an online store to sell the vegan condoms priced to compete with traditional ones.

The condom line, produced by the German company Condomi, raises the question: What makes a typical latex condom unvegan?

According to Ward and other animal activists, latex processing traditionally involves the use of a milk protein to soften the material, which violates the philosophy of veganism.

Condomi uses milk-free cocoa powder instead.

His condom sales have been brisk, spurring him to toy with other vegan erotic tools.

He searched for durable vegan bondage gear and found fabric restraints and rubber whips, but not a lot of well-crafted "pleather" gear, he said.

He researched alternative materials and settled on Lorica, a synthetic micro fiber used to make shoes and other vegan products.