August 31, 2022

Girls Get Off: The Kiwi brand destigmatising female pleasure one orgasm at a time

Girls Get Off (GGO) is a sextech company that just makes sense. In a time when social stigma surrounding vaginal orgasm is decreasing, Girls Get Off Co-Founders Vivien Conway and Jo Cummins have found themselves leading a category that is truly shining a light on the mystical, yet completely normal female orgasm.

If you haven’t seen GGO’s main product The Missy Mini, it’s pretty easy to picture. The Mini is a baby pink small clitorial suction vibrator with just three buttons and at its longest point is no more than 10cm. The original plan of Girls Get Off was to create a no-nonsense vibrator that was easy to use and fit the aesthetic of the day-to-day vagina owner. 

Owned and Co-founded by Jo Cummins and Vivien Conway, GGO’s main focus isn’t just helping girls get off, but more so around female empowerment and helping destigmatise the female orgasm. 

“I’ve always been really passionate about female empowerment,” says Vivien Conway. “That underlying passion helped us to create GGO and its mission. We knew the sex tech market was growing and from what we’ve seen, no one else efforts are as focused on empowerment as us.”

Jo Cummins (L) and Vivien Conway (R)

Presentable pleasure

​In 2020, the global sex toy market was valued at $33.64 billion and is expected to reach 37.2 billion by 2023. The industry itself has been growing exponentially in the last 10 years, in large part to a new focus on the invisible groups such as females, the elderly, and the disabled community. 

Yet according to Conway, there is still a long way to go in Aotearoa when it comes to normalising the orgasms of vagina owners. 

“There isn’t a lot in the space that encourages the normalisation of female pleasure. If you look at the media and what we’ve been taught, or even how guys talk about wanking so openly and so easily. It’s just not something that is talked about by women, there is a stigma that sits just around female pleasure,” says Conway.

The Missy Mini was created by the pair so that they could present something to the market that was simple, efficient, and didn’t bombard users with choice or frighten first-timers with endless options to get off. 

“It’s obviously different for people who are ahead in their self-sexual exploration journey, but for most people, they don’t want to go into a sex shop where they’re surrounded by fisting dildos and stuff that is plainly there for shock value,” says Conway.

“Most people in the market for sex tech just want something that’s not intimidating. They want something that makes them feel comfortable and isn’t a big deal purchasing,”

The New Zealand market is a pretty progressive one in most areas, yet it still has a long way to go in terms of destigmatising female pleasure. 

For Conway, the sex tech that comes into the market now still has to be digestible to the average user. 

“When it comes to operating and selling in the space, it all still has to be unthreatening and it has to be presented in the way that people expect and can handle,” she says.

Selling orgasms

Believe it or not, owning a sex tech company isn’t all orgasms and roses. Complying with restrictions and community guidelines can put them on the back foot due to the inability to push their message out past organic reach. Yet according to Conway, it’s all part and parcel of existing in the space. 

“Advertising is obviously our biggest hurdle. We’re limited by the advertising that we can do due to the various community guidelines that different platforms have,” she says.

Luckily, GGO was able to pair up with Lumo Digital Outdoor, who due to being locally owned and often creative with their campaigns, allowed the company to present the Missy Mini across its screens in a country-first out of home advertisement solely to promote female pleasure. 

“We launched on these Lumo billboards and we had some fantastic feedback, people still talk about them which shows the market is getting there in terms of acceptance,” says Conway.  

Following the OOH campaign, GGO was also approached by Woman’s Day, which saw the brand’s message and mission included in a recent issue. 

Although advertising is important for growing any brand name, in the world of sex tech the main way to get through to new audiences isn’t through bus ads or billboards selling orgasms, but by word of mouth.

“People are making these decisions based on what friends have told them and what reviews say. That was the reason the Satisfier Pro went off was because of that one hilarious review. No one in the sex tech market is actually marketing, so when we started we knew we could come in and do a better mixture of brand love and product.”

A social successsuccess story

GGO found success largely through its social media pages. Instagram sits at 50,500, and Facebook at 12,700 which isn’t surprising when you find out both Viv and Jo come from a social media background. 

“We both have experience in the social media space and running our own business. We know that our audiences are hanging out on Instagram and Facebook, so that’s where we’re putting the majority of our time.”

The social media pages are an ode to the brand, and clearly define the unintimidating nature of Missy Mini. Whether it’s through the hilarious “Sunday Confessions” or on-point memes, it’s clear GGO knows its audience and how they want to be spoken to. 

So, we wanted to know the ultimate question for Conway, and it wasn’t how many Minis they take home, but how did they go explaining their new career move to their parents?

“When I told them I was gonna quit my job to manage social media back in 2016 they were more shocked by that. This time I said to them, we’re gonna start selling vibrators and they were like, ‘Okay, that’s great.’ To be honest, at this point not a lot fazes them. Which again shows the acceptance coming into the market as we try to sell female orgasms!”

The Missy Mini is a non-nonsense suction vibrator that comes in discrete packaging. And don’t worry about being in lockdown with your household, it also comes with earplugs. 

You can check out Girls Get Off here or follow the brand on Facebook or Instagram.