OH*MI*BOD

Suki and her gadget.

SEX TOY STORY

Two years ago at Christmas, Santa was good to Suki as she received two of her all-time favorite stocking stuffers. For being nice, Suki was given an iPod mini, while her naughty side got a Rabbit Vibrator. She instantly fell in love with both. Her iPod gave her the chance to have her favorite singers Dave Matthews, Barry White and Marvin Gaye at her fingertips and the other item had its uses as well.

Made popular with its appearance on the HBO series “Sex in the City,” the Rabbit Vibrator gave the former eight-year product marketing expert for Apple Computers an introduction to the world of sex toys. More importantly, the combination of gifts got her creative juices flowing.

“My husband travels a lot and I had a lot of alone time with the gadgets,” Suki told PollyStaffle.com at the AVN Expo. “I just started thinking of a way to bring the two together.”

And that’s just what she did with the first insertable music driven vibrator OhMiBod. Like something straight out of “Barbarella,” the sex toy comes with a 3-foot cable that enables users to connect it to just about any audio player so they can not only hear the music, but actually feel the beat and rhythm through vibrations.

“I wanted to design a product that novices would like as well as aficionados, while taping into the whole music aspect of sex,” Suki said. “The example I like to use is, you are in the car and you’ve had a bad day, your favorite song comes on the radio and your mood changes. The same is true with music and sex. You may not be feeling that sexy, you put on your favorite song to turn you on and all of the sudden you are in a different place. It helps to move you out of your reality and into a fantasy world.”

The vibrator contains an integrated audio circuitry that converts music into vibrations. Users are able to control the intensity of the vibrations with how loud or soft they set the volume on their iPod wheel. OhMiBod, priced at $69, gets the most reaction from the music when it is set between fifty to seventy-five percent.

“That’s so it’s not too quiet, it’s not too loud and as you turn the volume up it levels out a little more,” Suki said. “Before we launched, we had a team of beta testers. We gave samples out to 500 users and we got feedback and one of the things they said was, ‘Sometimes you just want to power it way up and get the job done (without going deaf).’”

The vibrator also reacts to more than just music. The gadget responds to any audio. One example Suki gave was downloadable erotic stories like those produced by Sounds Publishing, who recently signed with porn superstar Jenna Jameson.

“There’s a lot of great avenues,” Suki said. “Obviously, there’s video iPod as well, so if you happen to be into porn, you can watch porn and use your vibrator and it reacts to the voice and the music.”

OhMiBod is a self funded company. They quietly launched in July at the Adult Novelty Expo. Suki said there they met sex-tech expert Regina Lynn of Wired and once she wrote about the toy, things really took off in cyberspace.

“The blogs started to pick us up,” Suki said. “It’s been a very spiral thing. The blogs have just blown us out of the water, talking about our product, promoting it. Now we have 45 resellers. It’s taken on a life of its own.”

Suki’s goal is to be a very women friendly organization that hopes to push the vibrator into to the mainstream. Currently carried online at Good Vibrations, Babeland and available in 15 countries, the “acsexsory” was designed to be non-phallic looking. A separate OhMiBod Pinkie Sleeve can be purchased to give it a dildo appearance, but the company’s aim is to make their products socially acceptable. Other items in the OhMiBod store include an exclusive iPod Garter, personal lubricants, toy cleaners and t-shirts. Suki’s hope is to eventually have her items sold in lingerie stores on par with Victoria’s Secret like in Europe.

OhMiBod has yet to buy an advertisement, but is looking to launch a marketing campaign in July. Once that has been done, Suki said she will be looking to get some type of entertainment product placement, as well as celebrity endorsements. Homeruns for the company would be a plug, no pun intended, on “Desperate Housewives” or an HBO program. Suki is also interested in getting a pop starlet involved such as Madonna, Gwen Steffani or Christina Aguilera to create a song specifically for OhMiBod.

“We’re a very sex positive company,” Suki said. “By linking our toy to the iPod, it almost seems to give us a bit of legitimacy. The technology seems to be playing a bigger role in the toy industry now and people love their iPod, so it just seemed like the right time.”

So far the response has been positive despite the negative stigma of adult stores and novelty items. Several thousand of the units, which come with end caps to transform them into manual vibrators and hot pink velvet pouches, have already sold. It seems once people have gotten their hands on them, they’ve been hooked.

“You explain how this vibrator hooks up to the iPod and they say, ‘Yeah, I get it’ and say, ‘Oh well, that’s a niche thing,’” Suki said. “What’s interesting though is when they try it, they go, ‘Oh my god. I really get it.’”

Many users have become part of an online community Club Vibe through the OhMiBod website. There bloggers can share experiences on OhMiBlog. There are also staff rated playlists and DJ mixes. Playlists can also be shared anonymously through the iMix section of iTunes.

“What’s fun about it, is it’s kind of like a hobby,” Suki said. “You definitely have to test the songs. There are songs that work better than others, but it is also what you are into. Maybe you want a song that has this very steady bass and it sort of reacts as a normal vibe, but you are listening to your favorite song, so it kind of changes things.”

The device is optimized for iPod players, but is compatible with other mp3 players, as well as CD players, laptops and more. Though mp3 players are generally for solo listening, the OhMiBod can also be used with docks for couple play.

“You can use it with a partner,” Suki said. “My husband and I have been together for 19 years so obviously couple play is interesting to us and we want to produce products that are great for couples. The other product we just introduced at the show here is called Boditalk. It’s our answer to Apple’s iPhone. Boditalk is a cell phone activated vibe. And again you might think, ‘Oh that’s not for couples.’ But as an example, like I said, my husband travels a lot, so he calls me on the phone, my vibe goes off while I’m talking to him on the phone and we have phone sex essentially. So we are trying to keep couples in mind when we develop these products.”

Boditalk produces a pre-set pattern of vibrations, which continue through the entire length of a phone call. It currently does not mimic the rhythm of voices, but it is wireless. Though currently unannounced, Suki said wireless OhMiBod vibrators and voice sensitive Boditalk items are definitely on their radar screen as both have been expressed as desires by customers.

Surprisingly, fifty percent of those customers have been men, buying for their wives, girlfriends or partners. Suki said it shows the intimate interaction the product can have between a couple.

“A lot of women are not tech savvy and their boyfriends or husbands are,” Suki said. “So the husband buys the item and is managing their wife’s playlists for them. I had one husband and wife team email us and say they never listen to music the same way again. They’re in the car, they hear a song and they’re thinking, ‘Oh, I wonder how this song will be on our playlist?’ It’s not just the actual use of the toy, but the whole experience that can become very intimate and playful.”

After the initial idea of combining the vibrator with an iPod hit her, Suki said she located a manufacturer in China, who she worked with to develop the product.

“We went through a lot of interactions,” Suki said. “He would send me samples. I’d try them out and say, ‘No, that’s not exactly right. This is what I want.’ We went through a lot of that and that’s how we got here.”

It was a lot of hard work, but Suki isn’t complaining. She stated, “I don’t mind testing my products. It’s a fun process definitely.”

And how exactly does this super cool space-age gadget work?

“I don’t know,” Suki said. “I hate to say that. I knew what I wanted and they were able to make it for me. Obviously, there is a chip in there that is converting the audio into vibrations, but the actual technical aspects I’m not exactly sure how they make it happen. I’m more of a marketing gal, who had a good idea and tried to bring it to market.”

- CCF, February 2007