Race to Mutually Assured Destruction - PlayBlue Blog
Anyone who reads this blog, first off you need a hobby second you are familiar with my “rant posts” and well here we go again.
The sex toy industry is trying so hard to kill itself. We have spent the last 15 years convincing the general public that you can get a high quality vibrator for less than €50 but we are constantly improving and packing more technology into them. This is a hole we have dug ourselves into and we just keep digging.
Consider a branded mid-range rabbit vibrator from a trusted brand. The money and design and thought that goes first into creating the concept for this new vibrator. Then it needs to be quiet, have multiple motors and be rechargeable and waterproof. Then we need it to made out of medical grade silicone and be beautifully packaged and presented as if it was a €1300 iPhone. This is then shipped from the factory usually in China to a distributor in Europe with all the duties and taxes involved. This is then sold to a retailer with a little margin added on and in our case shipped to Ireland. We then whack on our margin (with 23% going to the government) and ship in via courier to the customer. Who expects all this for €49.95!! and of course it needs to be the highest quality and last for years.
I can understand how all this works for mobiles and smart watches where the end price can be €1000+ and will sell in the millions but for vibrators it is just unsustainable. The manufacture makes pennies on each sale, the distributors makes pennies and the retailer makes pennies.
Let’s be clear, a really successful sex toy in Ireland might sell in the hundreds, it is still very much a niche industry here. Even the most successful vibrators in Europe last year would have sold in the thousands. No one is making big money in the sex toy industry the way it is setup.
We need to move away from the race to ever cheaper and cheaper sex toys. It will be very difficult as the bulk of customer purchases are online so we are dealing with pictures and descriptions to differentiate between vibrators. The solution in my opinion is two fold. First big manufacturers have to invest heavily in brand promotion and marketing and retailers, like us have to push these brands and the virtues of them to customers.
Customers will get to recognise big brands like they do in every other retail sector so then the retailers will be able to back that up online and instore. At the moment the vast majority of customers in Ireland have never heard of Womanizer or Lelo or Satisfyer or Rocks Off so all they see is a load of vibrators looking very similar at prices from €30 to €149. Who can blame them for picking the cheap offering? The problem with this is the €30 silicone rabbit is going to be underwhelming and leave a customer disillusioned with sex toys in general i.e we all lose.
It can start with retailers and we always try to push the virtues of branded original products but it will only really take-off once the mass marketing and branding occurs so we have customers coming online or instore looking for a Satisfyer not a vibrator.