CYBERSPACE—As fans of Shark Tank, we’ve often wondered how the pleasure product industry’s best and brightest would fare on the show if they were to pitch their innovative toys to the panel of kabillionaire entrepreneurs on the ABC show, which runs in syndication on CNBC.
We got a clue how they would react when the makers of Balm Chicky Balm Balm made a pitch on the show some time back. The lip balm company’s ’70s porn chic name had Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary opining that their best bet was to sell to adult stores … and he gave the distinct impression that such a market would be small potatoes.
Another O’Leary encounter with an adult entrepreneur just aired, but this time it was with Suki Dunham, the well-known face of the high-end brand OhMiBod. Dunham appeared on the CNBC show The Pitch, which places a hopeful entrepreneur literally in an elevator with a potential angel investor.
In a clip from the show, Dunham walks into the elevator and almost gasps when she recognizes O’Leary, and then recovers to make a 30-second play for his bankroll. She explains that OhMiBod is all about making sex toys “approachable and pleasing to the mainstream,” and then she describes the blueMotion line of Bluetooth-enabled vibrators. Finally she blurts out (just as the time-out buzzer goes off) that she is seeking a “$500,000 investment to bring this product line to the next level.”
O’Leary peppers her with questions, and fans of the show can guess where he focuses his attention: on whether or not she has a patent. When she tells him that OhMiBod has a sub-license, that’s a turn-off for the tech-loving investor.
O’Leary sniffs a bit at the $129 price tag on the vibe, noting that there are doubtless many less costly models. We’re guessing he’d be pretty surprised how much high-end vibes go for—because the blueMotion is completely within that ballpark. Not even Dunham’s assurances on her profitability is enough to entice O’Leary. “We’re probably going to approach $7 to $10 million in revenue. This is one of our best-selling products now,” she says.
Though he may not know his sex toys, O’Leary does know the value of proprietary technology. In an interview after the actual elevator pitch, he offers more advice: “I think what she could do to take her to the next level is to build something that she owns, that’s unique, that only she can sell, to keep her margins high. I mean, she clearly knows the industry. That could take her to the next level.”
Dunham has her own thoughts on how the pitch went, saying she should have emphasized the riches that can be found in the post-Fifty Shades of Grey era: “People’s minds are being opened to this industry, which offers a lot of market potential.”
And just what is that market potential? Take a story posted today on MarketWatch.com. In a piece headlined “‘Fifty Shades’ of Green,” reporter Charles Passy notes that “sex toys are now a $15 billion industry.”
The story itself is fairly superficial, but what we did find interesting was a link to a study by StatisticBrain.com on the sex toy industry that supports the $15 billion figure. Posted a little less than a year ago, it’s still pretty current information—and maybe O’Leary should take a look at it before he encounters his next adult industry entrepreneur.
