While sex toys might sound like a taboo subject, 78% of Americans say they own at least one. And, more brands are popping up by the minute to answer unique desires and reach longing customers.
While the industry still has its challenges, changing attitudes and the sex positivity movement have opened more space for those looking to sell sex toys online.
In this ultimate guide, we’ll take you through the ins and outs of the sex toy industry, with guidance on how to sell sex toys online—everything from developing a brand to ensuring customer satisfaction—as well as advice and real examples from seasoned business pros.
The sex toy industry: current landscape
As late as the 1990s, buying and selling sex toys happened almost exclusively in strip-mall stores with obscured windows, purchases secreted in paper bags.
It has been only in the past couple of decades that body and sex positivity elevated adult brands from fringe to celebrated. This shift coincided with mass adoption of the internet and ecommerce: Niche communities found each other and anyone could sell sex toys online to customers shopping from the privacy of their homes.
But as with any topic as politicized as sex, challenges persist. The nature of the business requires extra rigor on the part of founders to protect customer privacy. And, while technology has made it easier to reach buyers, it’s also often the source of strife for those selling sex toys. Restrictions from financial institutions and social media platforms demand that adult brand founders find creative solutions.
With the right tools, a unique product idea, and plenty of research, however, it’s possible—even for beginners—to build a successful brand selling sex toys and accessories online.
How to sell sex toys online
- Find an idea—and a market for it
- Build a brand
- Choose your business model: Make, manufacture, or resell sex toys
- Create an online store to sell sex toys
- Invest in sex education
- Consider additional sales channels
- Get familiar with safety and privacy practices for adult stores
- Market your sex toys and adult products
- Prioritize customer satisfaction
Selling sex toys online can be a rewarding business, but there are unique challenges that require creativity. If you’re looking to sell adult toys, this guide will walk you through the steps to creating sex toys, developing a brand, and navigating censorship.
Get advice from the folks behind brands Emojibator, Strange Bedfellas, Clone-A-Willy, and Little Jane to help you start your own sex toy business.
1. Find an idea—and a market for it
To get started selling sex toys, hone in on a specific niche or product that you want to sell. What corner of the sex toy market will you conquer? Maybe you’ll even carve out your own. Whatever you decide, do your research, says Kristin Fretz, co-founder of Emojibator. “Identify a strong product-market fit before investing capital and resources into an idea.” Consider ideas within the following buckets:
🍌 Target audience
- Products marketed to specific groups and communities (e.g., LGBTQ+)
- Kink-specific (e.g., BDSM)
🍆 Product type
- Vibrators, massagers, masturbation devices, dildos, and other adult sex toys
- Lingerie, apparel, and adult cosplay
- Complementary products and accessories (e.g., lubricants, condoms, merch)
🍑 Trends and themes
- Novelty and fantasy products (e.g., unicorn-themed dildo)
- Innovative sex technology (e.g., AR, smart sex toys, rechargeables)
- Emerging trends (e.g., long-distance sex toys)
- Sexual health, sexual wellness, and self-care
Emojibator cashed in at the intersection of a women’s sexual empowerment movement and the popularity of the eggplant emoji. Not only was the idea unique in the sex toy market—it was culturally relevant. “When you are offering a product or service that has strong differentiators compared to your competitors,’’ says Kristin, “it becomes easier to market your idea in compelling ways.”
Keep an eye on emerging trends in the industry, too, says Sarah Starkey, founder of Little Jane, a self-care and women’s sexual-health brand. “Brands that position themselves as part of the self-care and health and wellness industry are reaching new markets,” she says. “There is less shame now around this, less prudishness.”
Identifying your customer
In lockstep with narrowing in on your sex toy product, you should be finding an audience for it and assessing market demand. “We were in luck,” says Meesh Oglesby-Cunningham, founder of Strange Bedfellas, “because there was already a robust community built around the collecting of fantasy sex toys.”
Meesh also knew that the fantasy sex toy community was built largely by LGBTQ+ folks, and she has taken guidance from that community since she launched the brand. “We’re fortunate to have folks who are willing to tell us how to achieve wider appeal with our designs,” she says. “Since starting this company I’ve learned so much about inclusive language and product design.”
While Strange Bedfellas chose to target a narrow slice of the market, Emojibator launched its sex toys to more general appeal, with Joe describing the brand’s wide customer base as “first-time sex toy buyers, parents, gift shoppers, avid sex-toy collectors, gender non-conforming people, emoji fanatics, and folks rediscovering pleasure after sexual trauma.”
2. Build a brand
Kristin and co-founder Joe Vela launched Emojibator in 2016 after Joe had the idea for an eggplant shaped vibrator. The duo set out to build a sex toy brand that was “approachable and relatable”—adjectives Kristin says are not usually used to describe sex toy companies.
While Emojibator’s success can be attributed to launching at the right time—at the height of emoji mania—the decisions the founders made in positioning the brand with humorous, shareable content played a large role.
This is an important stage in building any business. Aside from having an innovative product, your brand is critical in influencing customers to buy from you. It should aim to tell a story, connect with your target audience, and have a clear mission. When you sell sex toys, brand is also a tool used to build trust.
Developing your sex toy brand
Clone-A-Willy is a consumer brand offering molding kits that allow customers to make safe sex toy replicas of genitalia. The parent company made its name in the medical and film industries, supplying prosthetics for various purposes. When it migrated its technology from B2B to direct-to-consumer (DTC), it built a more consumer-friendly brand.
When building your own brand, you will determine your target market and tell a story. But there are several other questions to ask yourself at this stage. The answers will help you create a playbook for every decision you make as you build your sex toy business.
Ask yourself:
- What do I stand for?
- What value does my brand or product bring to the market and customer? What’s my value proposition?
- What is the voice and tone for my brand communications? Are we informative and professional? Daring and playful?
- What are my values?
- What are my goals?
- Where do I want to see myself/my brand in five, 10, 20 years?
- Is my personal story critical to the brand story?
An effective set of brand guidelines will inform all aspects of the business, from who you partner with to what’s in your press kit. It will help you scale your sex toy business and maintain brand consistency as you hire or outsource.
Branding for your sex toy business
After you have completed the above brand exercise, branding becomes the living representation of those results.
Here you will make decisions about things like logos, colors, and creative direction. You’ll choose a brand name, slogan, and domain name. Branding guidelines will then inform you—and any future staff—as you build your website, design products and packaging, and develop marketing content.
For a DIY approach, use a free tool like Canva, or Shopify’s logo maker and business name generator tools. Otherwise, hire a design pro who can bring your vision to life. Shopify Experts are vetted partners skilled in helping ecommerce business owners with their brands.
3. Choose your business model: Make, manufacture, or resell sex toys
As with many businesses that sell consumer goods, you have multiple business model options, depending on how hands-on—or off—you’d like to be. Making your own sex toys to sell, outsourcing manufacturing, and reselling existing products are all options available to you, and each comes with its own challenges and benefits.
Making sex toys and adult products
Meesh and her team design and produce silicone sex toys by hand in their own facility. As she transitioned from 2D illustrations to 3D sex products, Meesh found that the information around making and selling sex toys was readily available online, and that it isn’t overly regulated in the US. This required extra diligence on her part to ensure her processes and materials were safe.
“There are tutorials and information out there for people who put the time into searching for it,” Meesh says. “As well, there is a big community of collectors who discuss this sort of thing and were a great source of information when I first started down this road.”
🍌 Benefits
- Total end-to-end control of the business
- Fulfilling for makers and creatives
- Unique product not available anywhere else
🍆 Challenges
- Learning curve
- Onus is on you to meet safety standards and do testing
- More difficult to scale
Manufacturing sex toys and adult products
Emojibator’s products are designed in Philadelphia, and the company is run by a remote team across multiple cities. All of the manufacturing is outsourced to factories in the US and China. This model allows the founders and team to focus on other aspects of the business, like marketing and product development. It also lets the brand scale quickly and operate globally.
Finding and learning to work with manufacturers is the most challenging aspect of this business model. As sex toys are products that can cause harm if produced or used improperly, it’s important that you do your homework.
Verify that any factory you work with has experience in the industry and understands and adheres to safety standards. You can work with a third-party auditor or a liaison to help ask the right questions—this is especially important if there is a language barrier.
Once you’ve started working with a reputable manufacturer, you can dedicate resources to growing your product line. As Emojibator adds new products to its collection, Joe and his team ask themselves two questions:
- Does it fit with our brand mission to deliver accessible, affordable, and fun pleasure for all genders?
- Is it exciting, astonishing, and newsworthy?
“These factors allow us to create niche products and unique experiences for our community,” says Joe. Use your own brand exercise to outline criteria for product development.
🍌 Benefits
- Ability to scale quickly
- Working with a manufacturer with experience and safety standards brings peace of mind
- Outsourcing the production lets you run with a lean in-house team
🍆 Challenges
- Less control over the manufacturing and QA processes
- Navigating manufacturing sourcing and relationships can be a learning curve
- Potential high minimums for new and small businesses
Reselling in the sex toy industry
The most hands-off model involves sourcing and reselling existing products for your own store. If the product design and development processes don’t interest you, or you’re looking to spin up a brand quickly, this is the option for you. There are multiple ways to do this, including:
White label or private label
Manufacturers create “blank” products for multiple brands, usually customizing things like labels for each. You can sell sex toys that already exist, branded with your own creative.
Reselling
Your brand may be built around a theme, rather than a product. Your efforts will focus on brand development and curating existing products (by buying wholesale) that fit into that theme. Selling sex toys in this way is a quick-start option for beginners.
Otherwise, you may choose to become a local reseller for another single brand, if, for example, that brand doesn’t sell directly to customers in your region. You would purchase wholesale quantities of products to warehouse and ship to customers.
Dropshipping
The dropshipping model is the same as the above but it doesn’t involve handling any inventory. Customers shop from your online sex toy store and your suppliers ship directly, skipping you as an intermediary.
🍌 Benefits
- More hands-off (ideal as a business to launch initially as a side gig)
- Ability to work with established brands with good reputations
- With dropshipping, no need to carry inventory, and can start up on a lower budget
🍆 Challenges
- Same products may be sold elsewhere—effort should be placed on marketing and brand
- You are at the mercy of other businesses’ decisions (discontinued product) or manufacturing and shipping delays
4. Create an online store to sell sex toys
Selling sex toys online is possible through platforms like Shopify. Where you may run into challenges is through payment processors and payment gateways. While some sex toy brands are able to use Shopify Payments, certain products may be restricted (e.g., cannabis). Here, we’ll take you through the steps to get started, look at which apps to integrate, and offer advice on choosing a payment partner.
Setup, themes, and design
Once you have developed branding guidelines, you’re ready to build your online store and sell sex toys! You can plug your logo, colors, and other assets into preset, customizable website themes, rather than building a site from scratch. This makes the setup process simple, even if you don’t have strong design or coding skills.
Suggested themes for selling sex toys online:
If you require further customization, you can work with a Shopify Expert to tweak a theme or build a unique site for your brand.
💡 Tip: Need help picking the right theme for your store? Take our quiz.
Essential pages for your website
There are a few critical pages to build when you are setting up an online sex toy store.
Collection pages
If you have a large collection of products, sort them into themes based on type, sexual preferences, kinks, or any other categories that help your customers navigate your website and find what they’re looking for.
Product pages
Due to the nature of your business and product, product pages need to pull more weight than simply providing a description, photo, price, and Buy button. Use an app that lets you create tabbed information to avoid clutter on the page. Information that can be useful here includes: use instructions, safety warnings, cleaning and care tips, and warranty information. These help you sell sex toys to customers by increasing their purchase confidence.
FAQ page
This is an important page for those selling sex toys online. You likely will be selling products that cannot be returned for resale, due to hygiene and safety reasons. An FAQ page is the place to clearly state your return and exchange policy. You can also answer questions here about materials, product use and care, privacy, and shipping.
About pages
Remember that brand exercise? This is an opportunity for your brand story to shine and to build trust with customers. Whether or not you center yourself and your personal story here, you can still remind customers that there are real people behind your brand. Your About page could contain your mission, brand values, company history, and press links.
Ecommerce photography for sex toy brands
With most businesses selling online, you don’t have the benefit of letting customers touch, feel, or demo your products before buying. Your product page should be as descriptive as possible to help replicate the in-person experience—both with copy and photography. Shoot sex toy products at multiple angles and include images of any accessories (i.e., charging devices).
While your product page should prioritize clear and uncluttered images to highlight the product, a lifestyle shoot can provide images for other places on the site, as well as for social images, ads, and your press kit.
This is an opportunity to capture the tone of your brand visually. Emojibator leaned into the humorous side of the products, having fun with its lifestyle photography. “We were brilliantly practical in our decision to take a picture of our friend’s cat holding the Eggplant Emojibator for our press release,” says Kristin, “and the internet in response laughed along with us.”
Also consider what video assets you may need for customer education or marketing tools to help you sell sex toys online. Hire a professional to shoot core assets that you’ll use over and over, and consider DIY video content for platforms like TikTok.
Choosing payment providers
When Meesh moved her brand to Shopify, her products fell under Shopify Payments’ acceptable use policy regarding products. But her peers have faced challenges. As a security measure, Strange Bedfellas secured a backup payment provider.
The relationship between financial institutions and those running sex-related businesses can sometimes be tenuous. “We face unjust financial discrimination as a sex toy company, and it prevents us from competing fairly in the marketplace,” says Kristin.
But many brands successfully sell sex toys on Shopify using a variety of payment providers. “Read the terms of service and what is and isn’t allowed to be sold,” says Sarah. “This not only differs between payment providers, but also between the same provider based on country. Nudity in images, prostitution, weapons, bondage, and potential for injury could all be relevant.”
🍑 Resources
Apps and tools for adult stores
Shopify integrates with multiple apps to augment the experience for customers and customize your site to your needs. We also offer a number of free tools to help you launch and run your business.
Here are a few suggestions for brands selling sex toys online:
- With more challenges in reaching new customers, sex brands should pay plenty of attention to existing customers. A loyalty app like Rise.ai Gift Cards & Loyalty will help you reward and retain your biggest supporters.
- The Help Lab FAQ page helps you quickly set up a simple FAQ page on your Shopify store.
- You may wish to formalize your shop policies and ensure that customers understand them by adding a Terms and Conditions Box.
- A video maker like Vimeo Create can help you produce professional video ads and educational content.
- Create a privacy policy with our free generator.
- An age-verification app, like Hulk Age Verification or Real ID, can provide a checkpoint to let browsers know that your site contains adult content.
- Consider creating personalized shopping experiences with apps that support quizzes and custom size guides.
5. Invest in sex education
Education is essential to sex toy companies to both ensure that the customer makes an informed purchase and to protect yourself and customers from any harm. “The products we sell are very intimate by nature, and I want to help people make choices they will have good experiences with,” says Meesh.
Educational information can appear on product pages, an FAQ page, and on product packaging. But it can also form part of your content strategy. Informative sexual health information can establish you as a trusted expert—and content can help drive purchases.
Emojibator took educational content to the next level, launching a month-long campaign each year. “During the month of May, our Masturbation Month site receives nearly twice as many visits as our shop’s site,” says Joe. “Producing this content is a way for our brand to lean in on our educational mission.”
6. Consider additional sales channels
With the challenges and restrictions related to online ads for sex toy businesses (we’ll talk about that in a minute), many brands need to get creative with selling adult toys online by adding more sales channels to achieve wider reach.
Explore the following channels:
- Sex shop founder Amy Unicorn says events like drag shows are a key part of her business. Music festivals, artisan markets, and other events may also work for you, depending on the nature of your product.
- Formal trade shows or consumer shows are another type of event that can draw wholesale buyers and customers to your brand.
- Selling wholesale through other established retailers can expand your reach. Seventy percent of Emojibator’s business is wholesale, says Joe.
- The next stage of your online sex toy business might be a physical retail store, where you can benefit from passerby traffic and local listings. Dabble in IRL selling with a pop-up shop first.
- Online marketplaces like Amazon or Etsy are another option. Check with the platform’s terms of service to ensure that your products are approved on the site.
“The biggest challenge has been raising awareness about our brand and products,” says Joe. “That’s why we’ve leaned in on our wholesale sales channel. We have been lucky to find reputable and certified partners around the world.”
7. Get familiar with safety and privacy practices for adult stores
You are about to launch in an industry that has unique challenges due to the intimate nature of the product. Spend time here to ensure your butt is covered.
Product safety and testing
As we’ve mentioned throughout this guide a few times, safety is a concern if you are planning to sell sex toys. Rules and restrictions may govern your business depending on where you live, so it’s important to do your own research.
“I don’t personally give instructions on how to use our products because I’m not a sex educator,” says Meesh. “My best tool is to put disclaimers on our products and encourage folks to do their research before purchasing.”
Disclaimers, as well as FAQs, instructional videos, and proper labeling can all help to ensure your product is used safely. At the production phase, work carefully with your manufacturer to ensure they have stringent safety standards. Expect the same of any other brand you work with as well. “The community looks out for its members, and identifying dangerous shops is part of that,” says Meesh. “You don’t want to be on the bad list.”
As an extra precaution, you may want to consult with a lawyer to ensure you are meeting any legal requirements for safety and labeling.
Customer privacy
While you’re launching your sex toy business in a time when views about sexuality are much more liberal and open, there are still many reasons why someone would want their purchases to remain private. “A lot of our customers live with family or friends who may not appreciate finding their purchases or may be quite hostile to them about it,” says Meesh.
As such, Strange Bedfellas ships in plain boxes and uses its generic LLC name on the return label. Similarly, “due to societal realities,” Kristin says that the brand name doesn’t appear on shipping packaging or credit card statements.
Privacy also extends to the information you collect from your customer. There are already many laws that govern how you use this info, but sex toy businesses may want to be forthcoming about how they handle data. “We don’t share any personal data with third parties that don’t require it,” says Joe. “If anyone requests their data to be deleted, we ensure it’s wiped completely from all of our systems.”
8. Market your sex toys and adult products
Sex sells, but selling sex toys is a little more tricky. Navigating the marketing of sex-related products is one of the most common challenges surfaced by business owners in the industry. Selling sex toys to your target audience means finding them where they are. But sometimes those places can be restrictive for sex toy businesses.
“The most effective paid ad networks have either completely censored or heavily blocked any product related to adult toys,” says Joe. In 2020, Instagram tightened its restrictions even more, impacting organic content for sex-related businesses.
“Censorship is a considerable hurdle we have to constantly navigate, and we’ve had to be very creative in marketing and promoting to the masses,” says Victoria Nelthropp, Clone-A-Willy’s marketing and brand coordinator.
But on saturated and established platforms like Instagram, making any headway with organic marketing is challenging too—for any type of business.
Social media is still a valuable tool for sex toy brands. Meesh uses it as another channel for customer service, and Joe says that Emojibator has done some successful community building.
With paid and social advertising being heavily limited for adult brands, creative founders can still find ways to grow their business:
- Influencer marketing. Reach out to sex-positive influencers that appeal to your ideal customer. Even new brands can work with emerging influencers who may have lower rates.
- Affiliate networks. Build a network of other websites, blogs, affiliate marketers, and advertisers who take a small cut of any sales they refer.
- PR and media pitches. “We have a publicist on our team that keeps our brand story in the news cycle, and we aim to create astonishing products worth talking about, which has been our strategy since day one,” says Joe.
- Email and SMS marketing. Build your email list even before you launch any products. Start to grow buzz and community for your brand by pushing people to a simple Coming Soon page. Collect emails and offer perks or early access to those who sign up pre-launch.
- Content and SEO. Use on-site content to not only build trust and help customers, but also to drive traffic to your site through relevant keyword searches.
9. Prioritize customer satisfaction
“I actually really enjoy when customers ask detailed questions before purchasing items,” says Meesh, who finds that the communication helps her recommend the best products. But occasionally, she’ll even find that another brand might be better suited to her needs. “I have a lot of peers in this industry whose work I trust, and I have no problem referring customers to them if I think they’ll be a better fit.”
Due to the nature of sex-related products, returns and exchanges are usually not possible. That’s why customer support at all stages is important to avoid unhappy customers.
“We have an extensive policies page and we link to it often throughout the site: on listings, on info pages, in all the emails we send,” says Meesh. “We can’t say it often enough!”
There may be cases when you will accept returns of open products, say in the event of a manufacturing flaw. If you’re a reseller, the product you’re selling may have a warranty, and you can refer those customer service issues to the manufacturer.
Emojibator offers a one-year warranty on all of its products. The company prioritizes customer support to ensure that any warranty claims are handled with care. “We know sex toy experiences are unique to each person,” says Kristin, “so we treat each customer with the utmost respect, patience, and kindness.”
What does it cost to start a sex toy business?
What’s a topic that’s almost as taboo as sex? Money. (Though neither should be.) The cost to start a business selling sex toys online varies wildly, depending on the model you choose.
If you decide to become a reseller, the bulk of your startup costs will be buying inventory, renting storage space (if you don’t have it), and fees for your online store. Even if you DIY a lot of this (using free tools to design your branding), expect to require a few thousand dollars to get started.
As a maker, your start-up costs may be lower, as you can make to order rather than producing inventory that sits. But depending on your process, the equipment and supplies could still cost you hundreds—or thousands—of dollars. You also will need to invest in branded packaging, which likely will have upfront minimums.
For manufacturing sex toys, minimums are also a consideration. Manufacturing partners may require you to purchase hundreds of units to keep your costs sustainable. Even the product development process can be costly. “If you are designing a novel or new product,” says Joe, “you can expect that process to take a minimum of one year and $10,000 upfront.”
The most economical way to start a business is through dropshipping. There are downsides to this model, as you have zero control over the production or shipping of products, but you can start a business with a few hundred dollars for a basic website and other online tools.
Pricing your products
As with any business, pricing sex toys is a delicate balance between making your desired profit and a retail price that customers are willing to pay. Use a standard pricing strategy to calculate your fixed and variable costs and add your profit margin. Then compare your pricing to similar competitors in your industry: Are you relatively in line with the expected retail price ranges?
Get off on getting started
You’re now equipped with all the tools you need to start selling sex toys online. Those passionate about sex education, empowerment, or supporting communities marginalized by traditional sex content and products may find the sex toy market a fulfilling space to launch as an entrepreneur. And as demand increases, there’s still room for newcomers in the sex toy space.
Despite the challenges, anyone with the desire to enter this space and the patience to navigate creative problems can sell sex toys and build a rewarding career. “I really enjoy this job!” says Meesh. “I wasn’t aware I could find so much fulfillment making dildos.”
The more brands creating space for open conversation about sex, the more collective effort can be diverted to influencing policy change. And the permissionless future promised by the web’s next act has a pleasurable ring to it.
Feature image by Chris Gash
How to sell sex toys FAQ
What should I do to become a sex toy seller?
Learning how to sell sex toys takes a little research to ensure you have found an ideal market and a product that meets the needs of your audience. Start with identifying your brand, your sex toy business model, and brushing up on safety and privacy practices. You’ll need to source existing products or create your own—and there are plenty of businesses you can partner with to achieve this goal. Now you’re ready to market and sell adult toys!
What is the best way to sell sex toys?
Selling sex toys can be done through a number of channels, such as through retail stores, online marketplaces, or your own sex toy website. With your own store, you are able to have the most control over your brand, and you’ll own your audience. When selling sex toys online, be sure to check the rules that govern each platform and payment gateway to ensure that your products will be supported.
How can I market sex toys online?
To sell sex toys online, you’ll need to market your business to your target audience. Marketing sex toys can be challenging online due to content restrictions imposed by some social and ad platforms. Get creative with your social posts to avoid getting content flagged and build an organic strategy. Growing an email list means that you can reach customers who’ve opted in to adult content. Other ideas include getting your products featured on sex toy review sites or hiring a PR pro.
What type of sex toys should I sell?
If you’re looking to start an online sex toy store, you’ll first need to determine your target market and the type of sex toys you want to sell to it. To stand out in the sex toy market, you’ll want to narrow in on a niche or underserved audience. There are a number of types of sex toys and sex accessories you can sell, from vibrators and apparel to massage oils and sexual wellness products.
