- Viv Conway from Sydney and her friend Jo Cummins were looking for a way to collaborate.
- Their brilliant business idea came about after hearing of a friend’s struggle.
- The pair set about creating a line of sex toys which Australian women have fallen in love with.
It definitely didn’t look like your average business meeting.
But sitting on plastic chairs in my driveway with gin and tonics in our hands, my friend Jo, 39, and I were brainstorming.
“How do you feel about sex toys?” Jo asked.
“In a business or pleasurable sense?” I grinned.
It was March 2020, and our hometown of Mount Maunganui, NZ, like the rest of the world, was in COVID lockdown.
A socially distanced drink with Jo was one of the highlights of my day, and it was a great way to combine business and pleasure.
We were both entrepreneurs.
I’d launched a sportswear business after finishing my uni degree and Jo had created her own personalised cookie company after having her two sons, Jake, 16, and Arlo, six, allowing her to work from home.
We’d often talked about collaborating, and with no end in sight to lockdown, we had plenty of time to come up with ideas.
“There’s a popular sex toy that keeps popping up on my Instagram feed,” Jo explained. “But the design is awful. It looks so ugly.”
She showed me and I agreed.
“Women want toys that are cute and feminine,” she said.
“And not to have to walk into a seedy sex shop or scroll through hundreds of models on a website to get one!” I agreed.
Just like that, we’d found a gap in the market.
And the more we researched, the more we fell in love with our idea.
Especially when a friend of mine confessed she’d never pleasured herself until she was 25 years old.
“It was never talked about!” she said.
And it was true. Conversations around self-pleasure were always male-centred and the more we investigated, the more we realised most sex toys were marketed with a male gaze in mind.
“There’s so much shame around female sexual pleasure,” I said to Jo. “I can’t wait to eradicate it!”
It took us a year to create a website and an Instagram for Girls Get Off – Jo’s fabulous suggestion for our brand name – and get our first toy made.
We started with one to keep it simple.
‘Missy’ was a small, sleek, pink clitoral stimulator. We knew women would love her.
When we launched in March 2021, we started doing daily giveaways on Instagram to get the word out.
Soon, the orders were absolutely flooding in.
Where has Missy been all my life? one customer asked.
We knew we were on to something.
When lockdown was over, I moved to Sydney to really make a go of the business, while Jo remained fully involved but living in New Zealand with her family.
One day, to advertise it, I dressed up as a labia and went down to various big beaches in Sydney with a boombox and a sign, asking women to show me their best sexy dance in exchange for a free vibrator!
As women young and older twerked and jiggled their bits for us, we handed out free sex toys like they were going out of fashion!
Within 18 months, we’d launched another four toys, as well as lube, wipes and an adult book.
To date, we’ve sold 25,000 Missys and thousands of our other products.
We’re just about to launch a brand-new model and we know women will love her.
It’s been a pleasure to help women find theirs!
