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Would you buy a vibrator from Ssense? Or ask a Sephora associate where to find the lube? A new crop of sexual wellness brands — conceived for the younger generation and looking to escape from taboo — are partnering with fashion and beauty retailers to break further into the realm of self care and re-envision a category they believe is poised for growth with the modern consumer in mind. But will a lingering prudishness stand in the way?
We’re at a tipping point, says Emma-Louise Boynton, who founded event series and media platform Sex Talks two years ago. “There’s been this big movement to open up conversations around female pleasure that we haven’t seen before,” she says. She attributes Sex Talks’s success to the current shift — even a couple of years earlier it might not have taken off, she says.
This holiday season, sexual wellness brand Playground is partnering with lingerie brand Fleur Du Mal on product bundles including the Play Date, which includes intimacy oil and a blindfold. “Combining these two products introduces that ritual behaviour of self care,” Fleur Du Mal founder and CEO Jennifer Zuccarini says. The same month, bodycare brand Luna Daily launched a “vulva therapy hotline” in order to educate callers and normalise conversations around sex. In October, intimate skincare brand Medicine Mama relaunched with trendy branding, promoting its Vulva Balm. And in June, sexual wellness brand and platform Rompy launched merch before their sex products in an attempt to ease consumers into the conversation.
These launches speak to the mass need for education and normalisation of sexcare and wellness. But getting through to the right customers is an ongoing challenge. Taboos still exist, and social media platforms often ban or reject advertisements that talk explicitly about sex, making it harder to market products to audiences who may be interested. Cross-industry collaborations and creative means remain necessary to break the silence.
“If you’re going to go and buy a vibrator, you’re probably someone who doesn’t have the level of shame that someone else might have,” Boynton says. “We’re still missing the people that need these conversations the most — who aren’t going to necessarily be in Sephora buying that sex toy. Because they don’t feel confident to do that.”
It’s a long-overlooked opportunity, says Simar Deol, foresight analyst at strategic consultancy The Future Laboratory. “It can be tailored to different needs and tastes, immediately offering product diversification,” she says. “Women [in this cultural context] are no longer willing to compromise and de-prioritise their sexual happiness. In order to fulfil their needs they are happy to spend money on new products and the sexual wellness category can enter the beauty, health and wellness space with the same premiumisation as skincare.”
The exact market share is difficult to measure, compounded by sexual wellness’s increasing overlap with beauty. PwC forecasts the sexual wellness device market’s annual growth rate at 7 per cent per year to 2026, bringing the total market share to approximately $27 billion. These estimates are conservative, given they account for products such as vibrators and sex toys but exclude the value of skin and bodycare products tailored to vulvas. This omission of the industry’s beauty-leaning offerings reflects a lack of attention to the industry to date — while the numbers indicate large, and growing, potential.
Still, it’s important to note the difference in attitudes across regions and cultures, Deol flags. While the zeitgeist has shifted in Western countries, she says, stigmatisation remains pervasive.
Mainstream touchpoints
Over the past two to three years, sexual wellness has made its way into mainstream retailers. Sephora has been building out the category since 2022, when it stocked Maude and Dame products online-only under a category then labelled “intimate care”. (It now has over 20 brands in its online “sexual wellness” category.) In March 2023, Maude became the first sexual wellness brand to be stocked in its brick-and-mortar stores. This was significant: walking up to a cashier with lube in hand is far less discreet a purchase than an at-home, online checkout.
Despite these retail placements, a lack of comfortability remains a massive barrier to entry for consumers, says Dr Clare Bertucio, CEO of Medicine Mama, noting that the majority of women remain hesitant to even use the word vulva. In the social bubbles that embrace this category, progress to date can be deceptive, Boynton flags. “It’s easy to think that, across the board, everyone is having these conversations — that it’s this new age of sexual enlightenment and liberation,” she says. “I don’t think that is true either.”
Brand partnerships are an avenue to normalisation. Playground co-founder and CEO Catherine Magee hopes that partnering with an established lingerie brand like Fleur Du Mal will open up dialogue around sex as part of overall wellness, as its customers are primed to both purchase the products, and have conversations with friends about them. Christina Aguilera, Magee’s co-founder, also acts as a celebrity endorsement, while Dakota Johnson fills the same role as co-creative director of Maude.
“It’s come a long way since I started,” Zuccarini says. “There weren’t many places to buy items to enhance your intimate life. Now you can buy a vibrator at Target — but there’s still lots to be done.” The partnership provides an entryway for shoppers to explore other accessories and beauty products tailored to sexual wellness, Zuccarini adds. “There shouldn’t be any stigma. Lube should be 101.” Fleur Du Mal and Playground plan to collaborate even more in the future.
An exercise in branding
On top of partnerships, brands are rethinking how to best present themselves to mainstream consumers. It’s because of this current mood shift that Bertucio decided now was the time to rebrand Medicine Mama: “I think it’s a big wave, and I want to be on that wave.”
In October, Medicine Mama’s packaging underwent a dramatic update. Now, the products resemble beauty more than bodycare. The idea is for users to sit the items on their countertops alongside their skincare and beauty products, Bertucio says. “Our old packaging was fine, but it was outdated,” she says. “I want this to be a product that people from early 20s to their 90s feel comfortable using and displaying.” But it’s not to obscure the product’s purpose: the Vulva Balm is clearly labelled as such.
Femcare has traditionally felt clinical and obtrusive, says Luna Daily founder and CEO Katy Cottam. With an increased emphasis on aesthetics, brands like Medicine Mama and Luna Daily are betting on their ability to capture more consumer attention — and, subsequently, spend.
Aware of the tipping point the sexual wellness industry is currently teetering on, not all brands are going in full steam. At Rompy, co-founders (and sisters) Blakely and Savannah Spoor are focused on easing consumers into the category. It’s why they launched accessory merch (hats and totes) before their vibrators and lube, informed by their mum’s approach: “200 mini conversations as opposed to one traumatising ‘the birds and the bees’ talk,” Blakely explains. The realisation that this wasn’t the case for many of their friends and peers was the impetus for Rompy.
Making marketing work
While sexual wellness branding may be increasingly akin to beauty, this doesn’t mean companies can always market themselves the same way. Whereas fashion and beauty brands lean into paid advertising, it’s near-impossible for sexual wellness brands to get ads approved on platforms like Instagram and TikTok (where sex is usually stylised in organic content as “seggs”). Frequently, organic posts are removed for violating regulations.
This exacerbates the access issue: sexual wellness brands need social media to reach a larger audience, but can’t utilise the platforms as they wish. “If I post videos where sexual pleasure plays any part, those videos aren’t going to do as well,” Boynton says. Sex Talks is even stylised as “S3x Talks” in Boynton’s Instagram bio, because “sex” will get flagged. For brands, this is a major hurdle, she says. “They’re trying to improve the conversation around women-led issues and are being shut down in their capacity to grow because they’re not able to market successfully online through paid-for advertising.”
Meta’s “adult products” guidelines allow ads that “promote sexual health, wellness and reproductive products and services”, but not those that “focus on sexual pleasure or enhancement”. In early 2022, Meta added examples of health ads for women and people of underrepresented genders that are authorised, after a January report by the Center for Intimacy Justice highlighting these types of blocked ads.
Brands have reported problems persisting and instead, have leaned into workarounds to get their message across. Amanda Marmer, CEO and co-founder of sexual wellness brand and community platform Feast, says that given the company’s name, the brand plays around with word lingo, using fruits and veg to supplement body parts in social media marketing. It’s not ideal, but it prevents bans. Feast also set up a college ambassador programme to encourage on-campus conversations around sex.
Because of the difficulties for sexual wellness brands not only to advertise, but to reach consumers on traditional social media, Rompy turned to Web3. In November, the brand launched on Web3 loyalty platform Try Your Best (TYB). On top of freeing the brand from restrictive Web2 social media advertising regulations, blockchain tech lends itself to the brand’s community-driven approach: TYB enables community voting and participation for rewards, incentivising “Rompers” to offer input. “It gives people a way to engage with the brand that feels safe and light hearted,” Savannah says.
Luna Daily couldn’t get its ads on social media, so they crafted an out-of-home, guerilla marketing campaign to introduce its hotline. Billboards and flyers plastered around London read: “VULVA. Triggered? Call this number!” On the day of the campaign launch, Google searches for “vulva” were up 35 per cent, according to Kirsty Hathaway, creative director of agency Joan London, who worked with Luna Daily on the campaign. It eventually found its way back to social media: Luna Daily’s ads garnered over 750,000 social impressions, and the brand’s own social following rose 30 per cent.
It’s an imperfect cycle, but not one that will temper the industry’s growth — if nothing else, because of the economics, Boynton attests. Sexual wellness is on the up, spearheaded by female pleasure-promoting platforms. “This highlights a big market opportunity to sell to women, because we’re a massive consumer base,” she continues. “There’s always been economic incentive to talk about female pleasure. We’ve just never done it.”
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