Sometimes it’s the unexpected things that can help a startup business.

Like Oprah touting the adult “massager” that your business offers.

“Within a half hour we were sold out. And it’s 70 bucks. I’m sure it’s a great product,” says Robert Linnemann, an engaging young entrepreneur who lived in the Le Center area for a few years.

He now makes Duluth home, where he and five business partners are wrapping up the first successful year of Racy.com.

The e-commerce site offers the full gamut of lingerie, adult toys and sex aids. But it doesn’t have one thing most similar businesses have — and that is the genius of the endeavor.

“We don’t have any pornographic images on the site. We don’t sell videos or magazines that aren’t instructional. It’s a non-threatening site people don’t mind telling their friends about.”

To be sure, it’s not the Disney store. The site has all the adult products for every desire and fetish. But it’s tame by adult Web site standards. Which was the niche Linnemann and his associates saw waiting to be exploited.

The 28-year-old Linnemann is bullish on entrepreneurship, believes now is a grand time to start a business and has a broad range of knowledge and experiences.

Raised near St. Cloud, he went to the University of Minnesota-Duluth for computer science, a curriculum which he found unchallenging as he’d been writing programs since he was 8, starting on an Apple II.

“I ended up with a music composition degree.”

Which, he says, isn’t as odd as it seems.

“There’s a similarity between computer programming and writing music. You need to focus on the overall scope of the project while paying attention to the most detailed minutia of writing notes or lines of programming.”

Music remains a passion. He’s in Tangier 57, a lounge-music group that plays in the Duluth area.

After graduation he landed in Le Center, staying and working with a friend who owned a restaurant there. He returned to Duluth and joined on as a programmer in the Racy.com startup.

While he’s become more at ease answering customers’ e-mails and phone calls about all manner of sexuality and sex aids, he admits it’s a business that still draws some ribs from friends and acquaintances.