Sex toys appearing on shelves at Walmart
NEWTON, Mass. — Last year, Jamie Leventhal, chief executive of Clio, a small company that makes devices like personal hair trimmers, got a call from a buyer he knew at Walmart.
“What do you think of sex toys?” Leventhal said the buyer had asked him.
It was a bit of a surprising question from a retailer known for its buttoned-up corporate culture. But Leventhal knew that Amazon and other retailers were having success selling adult products and that there was money to be made. So did Walmart.
Now, 45 years after feminists started selling vibrators by mail-order catalog, 20 after the Rabbit toy was praised on “Sex in the City” and in a moment when brands like Goop are espousing “sexual wellness” to women, Leventhal’s company has created a line of sex toys that are being stocked and sold by Walmart, the largest retailer in the United States.
Clio’s PlusOne line started appearing in 4,300 of Walmart’s roughly 4,700 stores and on Walmart.com in October. Walmart sells the items in stores in every state in the United States except Virginia and Alabama, because of laws in those places. The retailer plans to begin carrying four more PlusOne products in August.
“This is not a new category for us,” Walmart said in a statement, noting that it carries vibrators made by the condom companies Trojan, Durex and Lifestyles. But PlusOne is a much bigger move into sex toys.
The products are designed to be high end. They are waterproof, rechargeable and made with bodysafe silicone, features once found only on products sold at sex shops and online.
Yet they are priced between $10 and $35, far less than “designer vibrators” from companies like Lelo, which can cost $75 to $200.
Although Clio developed the products for Walmart and the retailer is its top customer, the company’s vibrators are also carried by Target and Amazon. In the last eight months, Clio has sold over a million PlusOne units. The company now has more than 26 percent of the sexual massager market, according to Nielsen.
“I want to become the Kleenex of sex toys,” Leventhal said, “the brand that you associate with sex toys.”
Clio is hoping to appeal to women who have never bought a sex toy before, particularly mothers over 25, but are embracing the idea that “sexual wellness” is good for you and can be empowering.
“It is like bringing a minisex toy store to every small town in America,” said Hallie Lieberman, author of the sex toy history “Buzz.” “It is very revolutionary in a quiet way.”