We are all fascinated by sex toys (don’t lie) but few of us end up buying it, why?

During 2020 quarantine enforced by COVID-19, I started investigating this question with 2 friends of mine. Through a survey with 3000+ respondents, 95%+ admitted they would like to use a sex toy but only 37% own one. Why? Among the remaining 1800 people, three main reasons explain their behavior:

• Embarrassment: they feel uncomfortable with a vibrator in their ‘order received’ e-mail and being delivered to their address
• Indecision: they can’t choose a toy – and are adverse to learning more
• Shyness: they would not know how to talk with the partner about their ‘forbidden’ desire

BookhouseX is an e-commerce project with the mission of helping people to discover their intimacy through games, tools and toys. The first product released is a ‘Secret Box’ developed with sexologists and various experts in this field.

Our customers won’t order a toy, but a black box (no embarrassment), they won’t need to choose as the content of the box will be secret (no indecision) and they will open it with their partner discovering together what is it about (no shyness). We offer couples an experience  improving the awareness of their bodies and sexual tastes, eventually unleashing a new level of intimacy.

We launched the pilot in Italy in July 2020, and sold out the full stock in 3 days – with zero marketing effort! Scaled up for Christmas with 3 new versions of the box and in 2 weeks we went sold out – while becoming profitable. Kickstarted campaign didn’t work out, I left to focus on something else.