Pay $60 for One Hour of Cuddling!
Professional cuddler Samantha Hess managed to get 10,000 customers just within a week of opening a cuddling shop in Portland, Oregon.
By paying $60, a customer can get spooning and "the level of human contact that we want or need in order to be our optimal selves" for an hour.
Business at Hess' shop, known as "Cuddle Up To Me", took off smoothly and she keeps very busy now. "I've gotten as many as 10,000 emails in a week," Hess told Fox 12, The Independent reports.
The hour-long sessions include stroking the hair, holding hands and a number of cuddle positions.
People are increasingly becoming career-oriented and some start feeling the lack of intimacy in their lives. At times, they crave for a warm hug or any other type of human contact to fix their emotional and non-sexual physical needs.
Hess had begun the business in 2013 itself, but now for the first time she has opened up a proper shop.
The extent of contact is limited to the comfort level of the customer. According to The Telegraph, if a person is not comfortable with touch at all, then she would just sit with him/her and read or talk.
Hess confessed that she herself hit a low point in her life that encouraged her to open the shop.
"I was at a place where I thought paying someone to hug me and not have ulterior motives sounded like a great idea. I decided why can't this be a thing that we can easily and safely reach for?"
Just like any other shop, where one pays to buy an item; here one pays to buy physical contact, Inquisitr reports. She faced many challenges while conceptualizing the idea as she had to ensure that the business would be safe for people seeking short periods of physical intimacy without being sexually abused.
Before she opened the shop, she used to meet her customers at a place of their choice, Mirror reports. She admitted that while she was looking for a place, she knew most landlords would not trust her business model. The landlords might assume that "cuddling" was to cover up sex.
"People always think that there's upgrades or, you know, additional services that we provide, and that's not true ... It's a simple service. It's the same for a man or a woman. We are a family-oriented service. We're not adult-oriented in any way. We just make people feel loved and accepted for who they are."
