How a budget sex toy company fixed some of sextech’s biggest problems

Sex toy company Satisfyer didn’t invent any new concepts when it released its line of internet-connected, app-enabled pleasure devices last month. Since the early 2010s, an increasing number of sextech companies like We-Vibe, Ohmibod, and Lovense have been flooding the market with toys touting the same exact high-tech features.

But what was new and groundbreaking about Satisfyer’s Bluetooth-connected toys was that, unlike its competitors, they actually worked.

Until now, most sex toys marketed as the latest and greatest in app-enabled internet connectivity failed to deliver on the most basic technological functionality. A majority of the leading high-tech toys that we exhaustively tested back in 2019 proved incapable of maintaining even passable Bluetooth signals, which was only made worse by their nightmarishly unusable and glitchy apps. 

But by finally figuring out solutions to some of the biggest problems in sextech (with toys that cost roughly a third of the usual price) Satisfyer won two Honoree Innovation Awards at CES 2021 for achievements in software and mobile apps as well as health and wellness. 

“We knew iffy Bluetooth connectivity would be the biggest challenge from day one,” said Ashkan Shabnavard, head of Satisfyer’s Future Innovation and Technology team. After only two years of  reviewing the competitors and finding their own solutions, though, he claims Satisfyer’s connectivity tech now pretty much outperforms them all.

It’s an impressive feat. But it also makes you wonder how exactly everyone else failed for so long, and whether Bluetooth is really what’s at the heart of the industry’s massive technological failures.

Excuses that don’t hold water

For years, sextech companies blamed the human body, which apparently isn’t very compatible with Bluetooth.

Kyle Machulis, founder of the haptics and sextech consulting firm Nonpolynomial, described how Bluetooth radio signals basically, “hate water. Our bodies are meat (made up of mostly water) that gets in the way of radios. Given where these toys go, that problem’s even worse than wearable exercise device wristbands.” So smart sex toys (especially ones made for internal use) need to balance putting Bluetooth antennas as close to outside the body as possible, without also creating unwieldy pleasure devices.

But Liz Klinger, CEO and creator of Lioness (one of the rare Bluetooth-enabled smart vibrators that actually works as advertised), doesn’t buy this longstanding excuse. “There’s plenty of devices that function better while transmitting through water. In the case of some sex toys, it’s just a matter of the product not being set up well… If I were to guess, I bet Satisfyer just followed the fucking directions for how to put in Bluetooth, because it’s really not that hard.”

Over a decade of high-tech toy companies blaming the body for these connectivity issues, the products still never improved much at all. Even as Bluetooth technology got better and wearables with similar obstacles like the Apple Watch and even waterproof wireless earbuds found solutions, sex toys continued to flounder.

While trying to verify whether or not water really was the problem, the Satisfyer team even ran tests that submerged both their own products and competitors’ completely underwater.

The glaring failures of high-tech toys can’t be blamed on the human bodies trying to use them as advertised.

“It factors in. But if you have the right people dealing with Bluetooth placement, then there are solutions to be found. And, of course, we test those solutions before sending out our products,” he said. “Water was not that big of a challenge.”

It’s possible, Shabnavard said, that it used to be a bigger problem for older versions of Bluetooth in the earlier stages of teledildonics (a term for new tech around virtual sex). Satisfyer has the advantage, he admitted, of getting into the space much later in the game. Also, an infamous 20-year-old patent many critiqued for stifling the innovation of internet-connected sex toys only recently expired in 2018. However, even back then, Machulis said he doubted it’d lead to innovation since investing in better solutions wasn’t seen as very lucrative.

“We had the benefit of starting a system from the ground up. We could use the most cutting edge technologies and not be burdened by the baggage some competitors have to pull along with them because of backwards compatibility components, like giving up on a product for its second-generation.”

Instead, Satisfyer’s toys are all equipped with Bluetooth 5, which both improves signal and excels at power-saving low energy. The upcoming second-generation Lioness 2.0 will be upgrading to Bluetooth 5 as well.

But in Shabnavard’s experience, the complexity of connection-related issues stemmed less from bad Bluetooth signals and more from buggy firmware implementation. The greater challenge was developing the firmware, which is the software embedded into smart devices that makes them work. Like any IoT (Internet of Things) device, app-enabled toys need to support software standards across various phones (especially Androids) and be capable of weathering new system updates.

“I don’t know if it’s the dropping of connections that’s to blame. It’s more like, ‘How do I even get this thing connected?'” he said.

A sextech company with an actual vision for tech

The glaring failures of high-tech toys can’t be blamed on the human bodies trying to use them as advertised. The more likely culprits, then, are the sex toy companies themselves that appear ill-equipped to tackle said flaws, uninvested in taking responsibility for them, yet very willing to take your money anyway.

“A lot of these companies are first and foremost manufacturers who know how to make silicone devices that vibrate,” said Klinger. “But major manufacturers creating what they coin ‘high-tech sex toys’ still have quite low levels of knowledge about how electronics actually work.”

Klinger dealt with this problem first-hand while working with a major sextech manufacturer during the initial design stages of the Lioness. She was the one who had to teach the sextech manufacturer how Bluetooth signal was improved by simply twisting the antenna wires a certain way, a practice considered standard in most other areas of tech manufacturing.

“It’s pretty common for large [sextech] manufacturers to just straight up source a completely built product from a factory and rebrand it, or else farm work out to the lowest bidder,” said Machulis. These Frankenstein products with no cohesive design or purpose also often go to market with little to no testing.

Meanwhile Shabnavard explained how Satisfyer invested a great deal of effort in retrofitting its established manufacturing facilities and process into more of an IoT ecosystem.

“We’re coming from a human-oriented, human-centric design mindset.”

“The IoT approach basically offers a lot of opportunities for monitoring and developing products together with the factories in a way that we were not able to do previously,” he said. “We have experts on our team who deal with IoT mass-manufacturing. So it’s not only a high-tech product and app, but also a high-tech production line.”

At the risk of stating the obvious, good sextech requires an in-house, full-time tech team. Yet many companies selling internet-connected toys don’t have one. While smaller startups like Lioness are often led by bonafide technologists, the existence of Satisfyer’s dedicated innovations team is pretty singular among the larger-scale companies. Rarer still, they’re led by someone with an actual philosophy on how that technology should be implemented into a sexual experience.

“We’re coming from a human-oriented, human-centric design mindset,” said Shabnavard. “We work hand-in-hand with the industrial design and product development teams. So we’re really working holistically in trying to create the best total experience possible between the hardware and the app. It’s never just about the app itself. And it’s never just about the hardware.”

From the perspective of a user, the difference is not only stark but tangible. After the troubleshooting nightmare of reviewing dozens of the most lauded high-tech toys in 2019, I was triggered by the mere thought of trying out Satisfyer’s new line. To my shock, it passed every test almost every other competitor failed miserably. 

Unlike We-Vibe‘s dreaded We Connect app, Satisfyer Connect is not only polished-looking and intuitive, but also boasts actual functioning and robust remote control panels that respond to your screen-touch commands with zero latency. Unlike Ohmibod’s unusable “Club Vibe” mode (which is supposed to let your smart toy sync up with your music), Satisfyer’s Love Triangle seamlessly connects to both my Spotify and Apple Music — without ever crashing once. Lovense’s Lush 2, an internal toy that claims to have “the best control range out of all Bluetooth toys,” dropped connection when I merely held my phone out at arm’s length. But Satisfyer’s rabbit-style Mono Flex never missed a beat even as I actively tried to disrupt it, clamping my legs shut and putting layers of clothes and heavy blankets between the toy and my phone.

“Our app is a really extensive system — we see it as a platform for continuous feature updates and evolution. It’s gargantuan compared to some of the other players. But it means there’s a lot more opportunities for things to break,” said Shabnavard. If Spotify puts out a new update, for example, it could break a lot more than just that function. “That’s why you need a team that’s in-house and continuously maintaining, fixing all those rolling update issues as quickly as possible.”

It’s not all perfect yet, Shabnavard cautioned. In particular, he hopes to work more on Apple Watch integration. The hope is that eventually users will be able to sync the toy to both their phone and watch at the same time, so they can migrate between the two simultaneously. 

While I couldn’t personally test out the functionality because I don’t own an Apple Watch, the current features aim to solve one other big problem for app-enabled toys: No one wants to deal with navigating their phone while getting off. The Apple Watch minimizes that intrusion, instead allowing users to control their Bluetooth-connected sex toy with mere flicks of the wrist.

“It’s a much more subtle type of engagement, that gets rid of the need for screen touch,” said Shabnavard.

Satisfyer’s not satisfied yet

Satisfyer’s feats, which would be relatively unremarkable in any other sector of IoT, don’t just reveal the ineptitudes of the sextech industry, though. They reveal exactly how much bigger companies jack up their prices in the name of selling you broken technology. Other toys named in this article run you anywhere from $100 to $200, while Satisfyer delivers functional tech without ever raising its price above their usual $50 or less.

According to Machulis, that’s because retail prices for sex products are often marked up to whatever price the company believes it can get away with asking you to pay. “You can charge a large amount and assume most consumers aren’t gonna show up and complain about the dildo they bought,” he said. “With forums and social media, though, people are now sharing information with each other, which is having an impact.”

“The other guys are ripping you off.” 

When asked to explain Satisfyer’s huge price discrepancy, Shabnavard agreed that, to a degree, “The other guys are ripping you off.” On the whole, Satisfyer does tend to take lower margins. But it’s also uniquely equipped for competitive pricing because it can manufacture much higher volumes of product than most other sextech companies. 

Yet, despite bursting onto the scene like a true Silicon Valley tech disruptor, Shabnavard said the team wants to do more than just keep copying what others have done but better. By making internet-connected toys more accessible and mainstream, he hopes that Satisfyer can help usher in more of a paradigm shift for the market, so the focus switches toward apps that integrate communal sexual wellness and education services.

Notably, Lioness already stood out as an innovator on those fronts at launch in 2017, with a unique model and purpose unlike any other Bluetooth-enabled vibrator on the market. By allowing users to track their vaginal contractions during orgasm, the goal was always to help users explore and learn more about their sexuality. Last year, they even launched a research platform aimed at helping sex researchers but also users who want to gain a deeper understanding of their bodies and arousal.

“Currently, our app is built around the one-to-one long-distance relationship model,” Shabnavard said. “But I think there are emerging opportunities for how people can use our devices, our app, to basically support one another and engage as a community.”

It’s an unprecedented time for sextech, with the pandemic causing a boon in sales for expensive toys that probably can’t deliver on their promises of safe, socially-distanced virtual sex. But Satisfyer is at least trying to do its part to turn that dissatisfaction into, well, satisfaction. 

“Both for us and the market as a whole, we all need to be much less about the gimmicks and clichés,” said Shabnavard. The way things are headed now, every toy company will soon have its own app, each one failing to truly tap into the potential of how tech can help connect us when we need it most. “For a lot of companies, the tech has always been an afterthought — a marketing tool. But I aim to develop the next level of human interaction.”

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