After digging their heels in against misogynistic practices, the folks at Lora DiCarlo have established themselves as champions of gender equity in the sextech space — and now the cutting-edge manufacturer is moving relentlessly, full-steam ahead with its plans for a pleasure revolution.
The innovative sextech company headed by founder and CEO Lora Haddock first made its explosive burst onto the scene in early 2019 following a widely publicized debacle with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which catapulted them into the public sphere. After the convention’s organizing body invoked a vague obscenity clause and pulled their award for Osé — the company’s flagship product which uses microrobotics and biomimicry to deliver hands-free blended orgasms — the Lora DiCarlo team fired back with an open letter blasting the trade organization for its blatant sexism and demanding answers.
Sextech and the adult space drives innovation. If we normalize sex and we normalize sextech then that technology doesn’t have as many barriers to spill over into other areas.
And guess what? It worked. After several months of back-and-forth, the Consumer Technology Association sheepishly admitted to having made an error and reissued the award… on the same day that Lora DiCarlo secured $2 million in seed funding.
XBIZ sat down with Haddock and director of marketing Sarah Brown to discuss the high-tech pleasure product that made headlines, systemic sexism in a male-dominated industry, and where the company is headed moving forward.
Here to remind you that the fight for gender parity is far from over, Lora DiCarlo is boldly, loudly and rightfully staking its claim in the sextech world.
XBIZ: Let’s talk about the reinstating of the award from the CTA. Have they ever done something like this before?
Lora Haddock: I don’t think we even thought about that but no, I don’t think they’ve ever taken away an award and then given it back.
Sarah Brown: The thing is, we don’t know if this has ever happened before because for most people, to have been given an award and then to have it taken away — they might want to keep something like that quiet. But for us we were just sort of like, “No, not acceptable.”
Haddock: We went about it in a very professional manner that laid out factual evidence about what was wrong with the decision-making process. It’s kind of hard to put up a valid argument when it’s clear that it was a very biased decision. When you lay that out for the rest of society to see, there’s not a lot of fighting to be done.
XBIZ: Did they ever speak to you privately to explain or offer a more personal apology?
Haddock: They did. The CTA contacted me a few months ago — it was actually an assistant to Gary Shapiro himself, the president of the CTA, asking for a phone call with us. We accepted and when we sat down on a conference call with him and his team the first thing to come out of his mouth was, “We’re very sorry. We made a huge mistake in taking your award away and we dealt with the entire situation poorly. We owe you a huge apology.” Our response was very much in the vein of, “Thank you for the apology and for the thought, but what we’re really after right now is to see some change in the tech industry. We want to see an increase in diversity and more equity amongst genders and ethnicities overall. So if we’re going to even talk about having this award given back to us, we want to make sure the only thing being affected is not just Lora DiCarlo, but that other companies have a shot at getting into the show as well and to feel safe being there.” So we’ve been speaking with the CTA about how to boost diversity at their shows, including rewriting their language and some of their policies in order to boost diversity, safety and inclusivity.
XBIZ: That’s amazing. Would you ever consider working with them again or being a part of one of their shows in light of all of that’s happened?
Haddock: I think the answer is absolutely yes, as long as they are willing and able to look in on their own association and see where they’re lacking in knowledge and experience. The fact that they were able to sit down with us and were able to be a little bit introspective [is good] but there still remains a lot to be seen. We’re excited about working with them but I can’t really get behind them until I see those changes implemented in the 2020 show and beyond.
Brown: One thing I will bring up is this whole idea that not having sex toys on the floor and not allowing adult products there would create an environment that makes people feel safe. But so many women, people with vaginas, LGBTQ people, etc. don’t feel safe at CES itself — they don’t feel comfortable in that environment. The reality is that it’s not the product on the floor, it’s the people.
It really comes down to: You don’t fix an environment like that by stripping out sexual wellness and sexual health. There is a deeper problem with culture and behavior and until we can fix that by creating rules that make that culture and that behavior better, we’re not seeing this as a finished issue.
Haddock: And it’s not just the policies — taking a stab at making their language more inclusive is a pretty big step too. It’s probably going to put a lot of people outside of their comfort zones but that’s how they’re going to learn and grow.
XBIZ: Considering VR porn and sex dolls have been allowed at CES previously it’s clearly not about the adult aspect. Is it possible that some people were thrown to see something like Osé was presented as a high-end robotics device and not just a toy?
Haddock: I think we as a society have a habit of linking pleasure to being taboo. Yes, it’s a device for pleasure, of course, but there are so many good things that can come from receiving pleasure. We call it an “indulgence” but shit, it’s good for our mental wellbeing! Osé is not just a toy; we’ve taken data points from real human beings and created something that’s meant to interface with any physiology. We’re really pushing the line of evolution of these products right now.
XBIZ: That’s true, I really haven’t seen anything like Osé before and was surprised to hear that it’s non-vibrating. How does that work?
Haddock: What we’ve done is we’ve created something that doesn’t vibrate in favor of biomimicry, which is literally — we’re impersonating human motion. We’re replicating the sensations that you’d get with a human partner on a very, very tiny scale, which is part of what makes this product so innovative. We had to take traditional robotics and squeeze it down into the tiniest envelope to create functions that aren’t just desensitizing or vibrating. There’s lots of different ways that people orgasm — we actually have a whole line coming out in 2020 following Osé called the Real Feel line.
XBIZ: Congrats! How many products will that include?
Brown: We’re pretty excited. At the moment we’re looking at around maybe six or seven products early next year. We’re focusing on blended orgasms right now with Osé because that’s kind of the “ah-ha” moment for Lora in her journey but the products that are coming down the line are intended to give more options for people who orgasm in different ways. Just as people have very different kinds of bodies, people also orgasm differently. Some of us are clitoral, some of us are G-spot, some of us have anal orgasms — it’s all across the board. With biomimicry it really does feel like someone has their hand or mouth on that area and we want everyone to be able to explore and have that kind of experience.
Haddock: We also have tons of education that we’ll be putting out because one of our huge goals is really tackling the stigma around sex. I know there’re a lot of people who are very open-minded about this space [sextech] but there’re also a lot of people who are very curious, but who are discouraged from looking into it because of the stigma.
XBIZ: You’re also working on a few patents, no?
Haddock: Oh we’re going nuts! We’ve submitted eight patents and we’re working on a handful of others that are going to be submitted soon and that will be going into different products for the Real Feel line. It isn’t just for the products we’re creating for sex and self-pleasure, though — we’re creating tech and other functionalities that could potentially be used in other products, in the medical field for example. We’ve got some really interesting R&D going on right now and we’re pretty excited about what we’re going to be coming out with towards the end of 2020.
Brown: I think the other thing is that sextech and the adult space drives innovation. From the 1920s when they first started miniaturizing motors for vibrators to online pornography bringing about encryption and online payment, innovations that happen in this space reverberate out into every other industry. If we normalize sex and we normalize sextech, then that technology doesn’t have as many barriers to spill over into other areas. From a practical standpoint, it’s just a better option for society, for sex and sextech to be normalized.
XBIZ: It sounds like there’s a lot to look forward to for next year. Circling back to where it all began, though, what was the inception moment for the Lora DiCarlo brand — and Sarah, how did you get involved?
Haddock: I hunted her down.
Brown: She did! I worked for LELO for about five years so I’ve been in this space — women’s sexual health and wellness and luxury — for quite a while. But Lora’s story about how she came into this space is possibly the most interesting founder story ever. (laughs)
Haddock: I guess I never think of it in that way. I think I was about 28 years old when I had a really intense blended orgasm. It literally was so intense that I fell off the bed and landed on my back on the floor and my legs still on the bed. I just stared at the ceiling for a while, completely stupefied, going, “How do I do that again?” It was actually with the help of a partner and I was looking at them thinking “How do I do that again… by myself?”
I started out as a Navy nurse and I have a family background in engineering. So when I started really thinking through “Is there a product that can do this?” the answer was “No.” You’d have to have a couple of different products and some really solid knowledge about your own physiology or you’d need to have a really talented partner and those aren’t very easy to come by.
I started putting together in my head how to do this. I realized that some of the products I had didn’t fit me and, I realized, they probably didn’t fit a lot of people. So how do I make a product that fits multiple physiologies, that can be completely hands-free (because that’s just a whole lot of fuckin’ fun) and that doesn’t need vibration?
I really wanted to use something that was in favor of biomimicry to replicate that human, partnered experience and feel, so I started gathering data from people and went from just talking to friends and family to creating a survey and pulling in over 200 data points. A trend emerged and that’s when I actually started designing something.
I created this long list of functional requirements for engineering and ended up sitting down with Dr. John Parmigiani from Oregon State University (OSU) and said pretty much what I said a minute ago: “So I had this orgasm when I was 28 years old…” and his jaw hit the floor. I explained to him the product I wanted to create and at first he looked shocked but when I handed him the sheet of 52 engineering requirements he kind of lit up like, “Oh wait, engineering things? I can do this!”
We started a research project two to three months after I founded the company in October 2017 and we started working with students. OSU happens to be one of the top four graduate robotics programs in the country so we were very fortunate to be working with them. A lot of people who were on the project initially actually stayed on in either advisory roles or I hired them directly as soon as I got my next round of funding. Within a year we had a prototype and that’s what we submitted to the Consumer Technology Show in 2018.
Now we’re almost done with our manufacturing phase and our second round of testing so we’ve been moving at absolutely breakneck speed. For a startup to go from nothing almost to market with a physical, engineered product in that short amount of time is really mind-blowing.
XBIZ: It’s incredible how quickly it all came about. You’re still set to start shipping come fall?
Haddock: Yes, we’re looking at doing a pre-sale this summer and the only way to get on that presale list right now is if you go to our website, LoraDiCarlo.com, and sign up for the newsletter. Then we’ll be doing the launch this fall.
XBIZ: So when CES first contacted you to say, “Hey, we’re actually taking your award back,” how did that go in terms breaking the news to your team and, more importantly, to your investors?
Haddock: Oof. It was fun (laughs). When we were notified that we were getting the award it wasn’t just the investors, it was my whole engineering team that was so ecstatic. We dumped so many resources and so much time into PR because we were like, “We got this award — yay for sextech!” When this happened we had already secured a round [of funding] so ironically, when they turned around and took the award back, they actually just kind of set us up for success.
We said, “You know what? We’re in a space and time where people are less and less accepting of the lack of gender parity — it’s systemic through multiple industries and women are sick of it — so let’s blow this out of the water and see what happens.”
I actually went and presented this to a cohort of women and femme-facing folks who are all entrepreneurs, CEOs and founders of their own businesses and their reactions across the board were, “Holy shit are you serious? Yes, of course we’ll support you but are you sure someone’s not going to pull your funding? Or what if they call you bitchy?” And you know, the reaction to that is, “Of course I know someone is going to say that.” That’s exactly why we cannot be quiet about this. We’re in a time where if we don’t continue moving forward very loudly, we’re going to lose our momentum. We took a big risk and ended up with a very big reward.
XBIZ: Was there ever a moment where you felt like you were going to give up or like you were fighting a losing battle?
Haddock: The amount of imposter syndrome Sarah and I go through on a regular basis is absolutely suffocating. Yeah, it’s scary as shit.
Especially being a female, you constantly second-guess yourself. “Are they going to judge me? Am I doing the right thing? Do I even know what I’m doing? Is what I’m doing good enough? Am I good enough?” It’s a daily thing.
One thing I like talking about when I’m speaking publicly, especially with younger folk, is like, “Yeah, this is scary but you have to stick to your guns.” What’s really helped us to drive forward is the culture we’ve created based on our values, which are respect, empowerment and integrity.
We have an important social mission that’s rooted in gender equity and we have some high-end goals for the company that start out with happy employees, innovative products and a disruptive brand. So when I look back at our values and our mission and ask myself, “Is what I’m doing representative of our values?” the one answer is, “Well, if I back down, am I representing my values? It’s going be scary as fuck, but I’m going to have to do it.” As long as we stick to our values, it’s been the right decision every time.
