Becoming a sex toy engineer isn’t something most people imagine they were born to do. Unlike other jobs—doctor, firefighter, cop, pilot—it’s not a career that captures a child’s imagination. But as with other adult pleasures, an appreciation of this human endeavor comes with experience. When naturally inventive individuals grow up and realize the importance of sexual pleasure in their lives—not to mention the financial potential of pleasure—that’s when a new sex toy is born.
As its name suggests, the novelty industry feeds on constant innovation. But because it’s a relatively new field, there are no official degrees, no certification programs. The root requirement is creativity. Practitioners come from many walks of life. A toymaker can be an industrial design student from London’s Royal College of Art, or an MBA grad from New York University. She can come from the boardroom at Apple or the bedroom down the street. He can be a toy fanatic whose own erotic hankerings are unmet, or an engineering nerd whose Rube
Goldbergian experiments are seized upon by others who see their potential in the erotic marketplace. But whether a toy is designed because it doesn’t exist and needs to, or because its inventor just likes to design and build sexy things—or a combination of both—these inventions are taking the standards of sexual satisfaction to the next level.
In the early days of the novelty industry, says njoy founder Greg DeLong, products did not reflect the same levels of care and creativity that are now prevalent among manufacturing companies. “It was a wide-open market; nobody really pursued quality sex products,” DeLong explains. “It was simply, produce a rubber facsimile of a cock, complete with veins and balls. You could sell them all day long and make a lot of money doing it.”
And many companies did just that—and grew rich. “If you make a rubber schlong for 50 cents and sell it for $10,” says DeLong, “it’s a pretty good formula for making money.”
More than a decade ago that began to change, as boutique companies got into the business. To compete against established players, they had to bring something totally new to market. These upstarts—among them Natural Contours, Vibratex, Jimmyjane, Aneros and njoy—had a big impact on the novelty industry. And that impact was fueled in large part by the passions of the inventors behind the brands, who got in the business not only to make money but also to build toys they wanted to use themselves. Their labors of love were built to last, friendly to both the environment and the human body, and more aesthetically appealing to the female population.
As the saying goes, “A rising tide lifts all boats”—something that’s been true for the pleasure-products industry, where the creative efforts of small, nimble companies have paved the way for higher quality among companies of all sizes. The end result is a win-win situation, especially for consumers, who now have more options available to them than ever before.
“I think the innovations of these new designers and companies has affected some of the old-school manufacturers to a degree,” says Dennis Paradise of Paradise Marketing. “They are feeling the pressure a little to raise the bar. I think they are quite capable of doing it, however, and I think the market is wide enough to accept innovation from everyone.”
But that’s not to say that the old-school companies have rested on their laurels all this time. CalExotics has sometimes created products too far ahead of the curve, explains Director of Marketing Al Bloom.
“When [founder and President Susan Colvin] introduced waterproof vibrators back in the early ’90s, the retailers as well as the consumers didn’t get the concept,” he says. “It took several years of hard work, advertising, PR and beating the streets to get the message out.”
Bloom says it was the same for CalExotics when the company was the first to introduce a rechargeable vibrator and when solar-powered bullets were first brought out.
“Now, two years after we discontinued them, there is a whole ‘green’ push on, and we are getting phone calls asking for solar-powered products,” Bloom says.
Doc Johnson forced changes in the novelty world when it introduced its proprietary Silagel in 2006. The non-toxic, anti-bacterial, latex-free product has since been used in many Doc Johnson lines, and spurred others to create their own latex-free materials. Prior to that, Doc Johnson was one of the first companies to do serious cross-branding when it introduced a line of batteries.
“We never rest on our laurels when it comes to manufacturing. We have always been known for the best, most advanced materials on the market, and Silagel is no exception. We heard our customers’ requests and created the most advanced rubber formula available in the marketplace. Using all FDA-approved ingredients, we created the first-ever antibacterial agent found in an adult toy. Looking back, we’re quite proud to hold that title—and to have spearheaded such a groundbreaking impact on the way toys are made.”
The People Behind the Pleasure
During times like these, when the economy has us all in a tailspin, we tend to up the ante of pleasure in our lives. So who’s responsible for our ecstasy? And how do they do it?
When it comes to the creators of pleasure paraphernalia, their motivations are both personal and professional. For some in the industry, necessity was the mother of invention: They saw a terrible void and felt the need to fill it.
For Candida Royalle, a successful adult film actor, producer and director, it was the very unergonomic standards of design in 1980s-era sex toys. Royalle, who is the director of marketing for Natural Contours, remembers when Natural Contours started. “Most women climax through direct clitoral stimulation, yet most vibes were hard phalluses that looked as though they were meant to be inserted. And not only that, but the average woman was uncomfortable with the hardcore look of these typical vibes,” explains Royalle, “and so we set out to design massagers that were more discreet, tasteful, higher quality, and were ergonomically compatible with the actual shapes and curves of a woman’s body. There was absolutely nothing like it on the market up until then.”
Rudy Kottbauer, who works in marketing, sales and customer relations at FunFactory USA Inc., echoes Royalle’s perceptions. “In 1996, Dirk, the owner of FunFactory Germany, had a female friend working in an adult shop, and she complained about the horrible design and woman-unfriendly vibrators. She also complained about the lack of female clientele, because everything from the toys to the shop was not attractive for women. So that was the initial step for the whole FunFactory idea, mission, look and vision.”
Others came to their craft primarily to exercise their creativity and sense of play. Ethan Imboden pursued his master’s in industrial design at Pratt Institute in New York but ended up, at one time, an employee of the human genome project. While working with human DNA, Imboden found he was missing the aesthetic and personal element of engineering technology—something not lacking in the world of sex toy design.
Imboden, now the CEO and creative force behind the San Francisco-based brand Jimmyjane, described the possibilities that opened up for him when he entered the field. “I had assumed, at my first ANME trade show, that sex toys looked the way they looked because that’s what people wanted, but it was because that’s the way they’ve always looked,” he said. “When I came back to San Francisco and everybody found out that I might be working on the design of vibes and other products on sex, suddenly it was all anybody wanted to talk about. And the reaction was quite unlike what I was expecting. Everybody dove into the conversation.”
Hamutal Weisz designs her own toys for Joya 4U, the company she started in Israel two years ago. Weisz, who still works on information systems and as a lecturer on computer science, was always an entrepreneur. “I was always inventing things in different areas,” Weisz recalls. “One day, I was talking to my friend and her girlfriend. They were saying that they were looking for a specific kind of product that they could use together. I had a vision, and it happened from there.”
She’s not the only one who got by with a little help from her friends. Scott Slagerman, the artisan behind the Simply Blown line of glass sex toys, had no idea that such products existed until he walked into the Pleasure Chest and saw some pieces by Phallix, a frontrunner in the glass business. “I met some people who asked, since I was a glass designer, if I could make sex toys. I made a couple of pieces for my friends, they liked them, and so I wanted to go further.”
The Method Behind the Mad Scientists
Regardless of how they got started in the business, what keeps these entrepreneurs going is an affection for their creations. Tony Levine, CEO of Big Teaze Toys, claims his toys “have refined character and soul. And you just want to touch and play with them.” He’s in the business because he “felt we could do something special and unique with both our company and our products that people would enjoy and relate to. And I love a challenge to boot.”
And the challenge—to bring one’s vision to physical reality and then send it out into the mass market—is a big one, and success is dependent on drive, resources and business savvy. But first comes the process of actually manufacturing the toys. While some people have design backgrounds, others learn by going into the local hardware store and getting a crash course in molding. Whatever the case, making a sex toy is like mad science.
At Jimmyjane, Imboden starts by gathering knowledge. Backed by the seven years his company has been in business, he sorts through literal data, “but also soft data that I’ve been gathering in working with so many different people around sex,” he says. “I understand and prioritize what customers need and want—what’s missing from the market, and what opportunity we can provide. If we can’t make something that’s decidedly better than something out there, it’s a non-starter for us. Little Something [Jimmyjane’s precious-metal vibrator] was a direct byproduct of seeing toxic materials with frightening packaging materials, claimed to be waterproof, were dead on arrival, noisy, smelly and overall poorly crafted. All these things added up to detracting from the experience, so we knew we could create something better.”
Bruce Murison of Standard Innovation Corp. did extensive research before embarking on the We-Vibe odyssey. “Bruce did user group surveys even before [We-Vibe] was made, to see if the interest was there,” says his wife and business partner, Melody, about the quest to design a small vibe that could be worn during lovemaking. “One survey came back and said, ‘Yeah, that would be great but there’s no possible way to do that.’ ” Not only did Murison do it, but he also patented the We-Vibe and designed the motor, which is made with gold contacts to ensure its quality. He performed a life test, in which he ran the motors for 200 hours without a failure.
As for shape, they “probably tested three or four—it was sort of just a progression towards an elegant shape,” says Murison, who also did studies at the University of Ottawa and spoke with professors to find out the average shape and size of a woman’s vagina.
Ergonomics also played a big part in the creation of Sasi, Je Joue’s game-changing clitoral stimulator. Duncan Turner of Je Joue claims ergonomics as his biggest obstacle, but hard work and research paid off. “The female body varies hugely; so does preference of stimulation,” says the designer. “We have a great relationship with a European gynecology research institute, who give us access to unique data enabling us to achieve our goal of a product that can be personalized to suit a wide range of women’s desires.”
After the design is solidified, the actual production of the toy puts more variables into play. Once Joya 4U’s Weisz had her vision, she had to turn it into a tangible reality. “I went to a hobby shop and asked how to make a mold that I could inject plastic into. I was shown a silicone mold, and I went home and made it there. For weeks, I had many, many ugly products. It was a messy process, but it got the result. Then I had to look for product designers, and together we created the Little Su.”
After research and development comes testing. For C. Dionne, a former retail sex educator at Tulip sex toy gallery in Chicago, she turns to family, friends and strangers for feedback. “I pass out samples to strangers at Tulip, because there’s nothing more real than the brutal honesty of strangers.”
Koichi Matsumoto—a former auto mechanic who saw the potential in making a male sex product designed to destigmatize solo sexual pleasure for men—is always the first tester of any of the products made by Tenga, his Japan-based company. Then, he sends the products to the staff for more suggestions. “It’s called tasting the product,” he says through the use of a translator. “I’m not going to let any product come out that I don’t like.”
Once the product is out there, you can’t guarantee success. But if a designer’s heart and soul are in his or her work, a toy can often go far.
Seduction in the Marketplace
Who buys your sex toys is just as much in how you market them as in how you make them. Making at least a few toys that are gender neutral—or even a whole line—may help manufacturers reach a wider market. “I never liked how sex toys are marketed to one gender or another,” says Jessica Resler, CEO of Vergenza, which manufactures aluminum toys. “It was important to me to make Vergenza about gender neutrality. At Vergenza we speak of the “modern lover,” and to us that is someone who isn’t gender specific.”
Word choice can be key, because the right phrases can create a completely different sensibility to appeal to consumers who may have been turned off by traditional novelty-item marketing. Vergenza calls its products “erotic tools.” For Je Joue, the focus is on “four key areas” that Turner describes as “luxury, innovation, ergonomics and personal discovery.” Other high-end companies have used language to refine their style and market position. “LELO stands for Luxury Erotic Lifestyle Objects, but I prefer Ladies Everywhere Love Orgasms,” says Shaye Saldana, LELO’s PR and marketing manager. And Jimmyjane is a “lifestyle brand,” not a sex toy company. “That was the initiation of the concept from day one,” Imboden says. “Jimmyjane exudes the idea of sexiness throughout the day; it’s not about being about in the bedroom at night with the lights off. We promote a way of moving through life.”
For some companies, language is less important than location. Part of the reason for FunFactory’s success is that everything is made in Germany, giving the company complete control over the quality of its products. Like most of the newer sex toy companies, material is a huge consideration in making any quality product. “All of our toys are made out of medical-grade silicone, with the exception of the LAYAspot and the Smartballs, which are made out of a kind of phthalate-free plastic, because we won’t use any material that may cause cancer,” Kottbauer adds.
High-end manufacturers LELO got their start in Sweden, but as they have grown by leaps and bounds, they’ve hired designers in Shanghai just to keep up with the product line. Together, these designers collaborate with the founders—Filip Sedic, Eric Kalen and Carl Magnuson—who all also happen to be engineers in either industrial design or technical design. From there, the process involves the sales and marketing team too. According to PR manager Saldana, “There are offices in Australia, Sweden and the U.S., and all of us have a say in what gets produced. We like things clean, concise, artistic.”
For Vergenza, “made in the U.S.A.” gives the company an edge. Jessica Resler says, “I think customers appreciate our commitment to building domestic jobs and contributing to a domestic community. We are ecstatic to support West Coast production, and while we could have taken the design and produced offshore, it was important to us to make products we are absolutely sure are produced with care, quality and control. It costs us more to make our products domestically, but the payoff is passed on to conscious consumers who recognize when a company has gone to the effort to conduct research and make informed social decisions.”
Making informed environmental decisions is a priority for certain companies, including NobEssence, manufacturers of wooden toys. While she worked on the branding of their new product, recalls Alicia Yoder, her husband, Jason, “developed the manufacturing process and the environmental impact of the business. We optimize our environmental impact through consciously considering our indirect and direct footprint.”
Yoder explains, “Our indirect footprint includes all things pertaining to the everyday conduct of business. Banning fax machines, maintaining a paperless office, using and recycling fiber are just a few ways in which we optimize our indirect environmental impact. Our direct impact includes all things pertaining to the development, production, packaging, distribution, use, take-back and end-of-life of our products. The point at which you consider the environment in your product’s lifecycle is crucial. The longer you wait, the lower your environmental benefits, and the higher your financial costs. For this reason, our environmental and social criterions are established long before we begin design.”
Stainless steel, rechargeable motors, lifetime guarantees, environmental consciousness—these are all things that can help keep a company above the rest. Pape Tres, the designer of Spareparts harnesses, knows that quality and customer loyalty doesn’t come without cost. “I think in most cases you get what you pay for, and if you are looking to have something last for more than a quickie and also be a healthy experience, then you have to do a little research on products and what they are made of, and how they are made—or at a minimum check out customer reviews of those products. I think an educated shopper, especially in this economy, is great for business because if customers get what they want the first time, they return and refer their friends for future purchases.”
The increasing quality of sex toys these days is having a positive effect on the retailers who carry the items, Paradise notes.
“It’s giving them a few high-end, attractive items that will not necessarily be seen on the shelves of places like Walgreens,” he says.
The Future of Sex Toys
“We believe that the sex toy industry is just budding in terms of new design concepts and execution of those concepts,” says Suki Dunham, founder of OhMiBod. “Over the last decade we have seen a fundamental shift in the design of things like kitchen utensils to alarm clocks. All have begun to pay more attention to how a product looks, aesthetically, and how to design things to provide the best user experience. That’s the shift that we now see taking place in the sex toy industry.”
Metis Black, president of Tantus, Inc., an innovator in silicone, knows that aesthetics will continue to be important in the future. “The gates have just been opened for design. I think Tantus was a little ahead of our time. Eleven years ago the art pieces didn’t sell like the semi-realistic pieces did, and all of our original designs looked more like art. We’ve always tried to marry form with function, which is interesting because lately I’ve seen a focus on the technology rather than design.”
For Candida Royalle, the future is now. “I think we and other innovative designers like Natural Contours are the future: completely unique designs driven by the tastes and demands of the mainstream female market. Until just a couple of years ago the giant toy manufacturers were still showing up at trade shows with the typical plastic Day-glo vibrating phalluses. They finally caught on and began to imitate the small innovative designers,” Royalle notes. “If you’re looking to make it in the mainstream female market, you’ve got to produce quality, especially when the competition is getting so stiff!” she jokes.
Companies will hopefully continue to care about the environment, and packaging and materials are sure to reflect that mentality. Some may argue that if we’re so concerned with the environment, there isn’t a need for sex toys, but the point here is that sex toys help us on our crusade for personal pleasure. And sex toys bring pleasure, even if they are a luxury item. “We’re all born with everything we need to lead a fulfilling sex life,” says DeLong, “but adding quality sex toys to the mix encourages us to explore new ways to pleasure ourselves and our partners.”
Bloom also notes that companies who are driving innovation in the industry must realize there is a responsibility that comes with that honor. Sometimes being first has put CalExotics too far ahead of the curve, he says, at a cost of thousands of dollars.
“But CalExotics has the willingness to invest and take the risk, whereas sometimes a smaller company cannot,” Bloom says. “Being a ‘big’ company means that we are willing and able to take the risks to make the products better, more reliable and priced for the masses.”
“At the end of the day this is a very personal endeavor,” Imboden reminds us. “And it can be revealing and it leaves you vulnerable, because you really put yourself in your work. You hear I like you or I don’t like you, not I like your work or I don’t like your work. I didn’t enter this category because I was specifically intrigued by the category. It wasn’t until I realized how fixated I was on sex, until I really understood this massive gap between what people really wanted and what was available to them, that I realized this is where I need to be.”
Whatever the design of the future, DeLong loves his job. “There is no other design job that I know of that offers the opportunity to bring such joy and pleasure to peoples’ lives. Creating innovative, quality sex toys is quite fulfilling in the sense that we’re making people happy on a level that surpasses, I hope, the mere act of buying a new gadget.”
This article originally ran in the November issue of AVN with the sidebar below.
Anatomy of an Invention
The “aha” moments that sent these mad scientists on a quest to build a better climax
Greg Alves and Gregg Alan, the founding partners of Evolved Novelties, collectively worked in the adult industry for nearly 40 years, developing and launching several major companies. In 2007 they took the plunge and dove head first into the adult novelty pool. The inspiration for Evolved’s packaging came to Alves when he saw a pair of sunglasses encased in a stylish, attention-grabbing metallic tin. A commitment to creating original products with unique packaging has paid dividends, and Evolved has quickly become a major player in the industry.
Duncan Turner began work on Je Joue’s SaSi after Geoff Huntington (a leading industrial designer and the founder of Je Joue) saw some of his earlier work on tactile moving skins from a master’s course in industrial design engineering, offered jointly by the Royal College of Art and the Imperial College London. Turner had never created a sex toy before, but since then he’s just finished his second (the G-Ki) and is now working on a third prototype. Turner calls his design process simple. “We brainstorm a range of directions in a small group led by our design team. We then take those ideas and quickly mock them up into a believable product, which can be shown to group of women.” Using feedback from that group, the designers form an idea of what the product is and start testing in earnest. “We build test prototypes that are sent to testers (some highly experienced testers, some who are new to toys). Only when we have great feedback from everyone are we happy that we have a product which is worth taking to the next level.”
Greg DeLong of njoy began his career in engineering and product development. From bicycles to kitchen products to electric-powered motor scooters, DeLong’s handiwork enriched the lives of millions of gadget gurus. But even before he started njoy in 2005, he had been making his own sex toys for years as a hobby. “Probably nothing you’d want to buy,” he says. But the final forms that emerged from DeLong’s imagination—sleek, elegant stainless steel pleasure products—were definitely something that we wanted to buy. “The vision behind founding the njoy brand was to create a line of safe, thoughtfully designed, carefully crafted and of course highly pleasurable erotic toys, backed by a strong brand to foster customer loyalty and support future growth,” DeLong says. “In short, njoy creates products that demonstrate respect for the customer, and please the senses on all levels too.”
For Alicia and Jason of NobEssence, their entrée into the world of wooden dildos started with a walk along a beach in Northern California, where the married parents of six came across an interesting piece of driftwood. As a couple, they’d been exploring sex toys but hadn’t come across anything that pleased both of them. Jason took that piece of driftwood and carved into “into a beautiful phallus,” based on his wife’s specifications. “This curve here and that bloop there,” Alicia recalls. “The first prototypes for NobEssence were hand-carved from some of the lovely, exotic hardwoods that we still use now, and as long they were covered with a condom, they worked like a dream.” The original sculptures were designed with “a very personal perspective,” Alicia says. “I wanted a G-Spotter that was comfortable to hold—Fling. Then I was pregnant, and access was getting a little more difficult—Tryst. The designs evolved after trying them ourselves, listening to our testing panel and combining all the learning with Jason’s fabulous sense of aesthetics.”
Suki Dunham, founder of OhMiBod, came from the world of gadgets and gizmos, as did her husband, Brian Vatter. Dunham worked at Apple for seven and a half years as a business manager in worldwide product marketing. Meanwhile, Vatter worked as a director of finance and systems for a division of Tyco Electronics. “Years ago, Brian bought me two stocking stuffers: an iPod mini and a vibrator,” Dunham recalls. “I am a very cerebral person, and the use of music while I masturbated helped me escape out of my own head, so I was using the two gifts at the same time. Brian and I talked about it and we just thought, why not put these two great inventions together?”
Koichi Matsumoto of Tenga is fond of cooking, which may be why his latest design is shaped like an egg. But when Matusmoto first began to work on creating a high-end male masturbation toy, his research took him to Circuit City, Home Depot and other home and electrical appliance centers. Walking the aisles, he became convinced that design, function and price were the foundations of a mainstream sex toy. It wasn’t until Matsumoto met marketing adviser Robert Largen that his product came to the United States. “My partner saw an article about Koichi in Forbes, and we thought the product had a beautiful design,” Largen remembers. “And then I tried it and said, ‘Holy shit, what was that?’ It was the only time I ever masturbated that I remembered it totally from beginning to end. And I saw a basis for building a brand that takes the men’s category of sex toys to a respectable level.”
Jessica Resler of Vergenza has an MBA from NYU and a background in fashion and luxury marketing. She used those skills to start her company in September 2007. “I always felt like there was nothing on the market that spoke to my personal aesthetic,” Resler explains. “While I’m feminine, I’m not “girlie” and I never liked how I was being marketed to from sex toy companies.”
Bruce and Melody Murison of We-Vibe began their journey toward the ultimate couples sex toy in the car. Driving back from NYC in 2001, the married parents of three came up with the concept. “The We-vibe was created out of 30 seconds of a seven-hour conversation,” Bruce says. But it was only after Bruce was laid off by a high-tech firm that created IC chips for phones and switches that he was able to focus on the invention. In addition to remortgaging their house and raising half a million dollars, Bruce spent years perfecting his toy.
This article originally ran in the November issue of AVN.
