Pleasing the Masses

Jimmyjane’s Intro 1

How is Rheaume different than his predecessor? “I can tell time. Ethan can build a clock and tell time,” Rheaume says modestly.  We’re sitting at the conference table in his office — the only private room in Jimmyjane’s largely open work space. The full LiveSexy line, arranged by color, sits laid out across the table in front of us. A print of lips on the wall behind Rheaume’s table coordinates nicely with the the pink and dark purple hues of the LiveSexy line.

Rheaume sees himself as simply the custodian of Imboden’s vision, but his tenure has already resulted in a dramatically different business strategy. In the two years since acquisition, Jimmyjane’s methods have changed: where product roll outs used to be a rare, heavily hyped affair, new products are now added to the Jimmyjane catalogue at a rapid clip. It took three years to debut Forms 2, 3, and 4; in contrast, Forms 1, 5, and 8 appeared in quick succession over the course of 2015.

“The product cycle has been much faster,” Murphy says. “We needed to introduce more products,” she continues, noting that “it’s something you need for your retailers, and just to keep the company relevant, keep it growing.”

Enter the LiveSexy line, a marked departure from the original vision of Jimmyjane as an aspirational, exclusive brand. The LiveSexy line is pitched as “affordable luxury,” a way that more budget-minded customers can still get in on the Jimmyjane experience. Where the original Jimmyjane products all retailed for well above $100, the LiveSexy products are available for as low as $29 – and no more than $59.

This isn’t the first time that the company has made a play for budget-minded consumers. Jimmyjane introduced The Usual Suspects line in 2008, which selected popular vibrators like the Rabbit vibe, Pocket Rocket, and Slimline, remade them in white, and provided them with classy Jimmyjane-branded packaging.

The Usual Suspects weren’t original, but the Jimmyjane touch had a magic effect: “Our customers love them because they had a warranty and they had beautiful, giftable packaging,” Coyote Amrich, purchasing manager for San Francisco-based sex toy shop Good Vibrations, told me. For some consumers, the packaging and branding were enough to elevate otherwise unexceptional products.

But with the LiveSexy line, Jimmyjane is doing something different, crafting a mid-market homage to the company’s existing Jimmyjane products. The Intro 2 mimics the shape of the two-pronged Form 2; the Intro 6 shares the Form 6’s body hugging curves.

The LiveSexy products aren’t merely the Form toys with cheaper parts: they’ve been thoughtfully redesigned for a mid-tier budget and a beginner mindset. As I surveyed the toys by her desk, Formoso walked me through the work that went into creating a line that’s both stylish and accessible. The LiveSexy line uses less expensive dry cell batteries instead of rechargeable lithium ones. Because the casing for the former is so much larger, it necessarily requires a larger toy; but Formoso feared that merely scaling up the size would render the products clunky and cheap feeling.

“When you’re designing something, you don’t want it to look like you just scaled it up or stretched it in Illustrator,” Formoso says. “You have to really go back and redesign how the components are going to fit in.”

The Intro 1, a thin, rectangular panty vibe that looks more like a remote control than a vibrator, may have been her biggest challenge. If the product had merely been scaled up, it would have been huge — perhaps twice the size of the original — a potential deal-breaker for a vibrator intended to be discreetly tucked inside a user’s underwear. Formoso’s solution was a product that’s longer than the original, but comparable in width and thickness. For a product that retails at $130 less than the luxury version, that’s a tremendous achievement.

The toys aren’t merely bigger and cheaper, they’re also simpler to use. Unlike the Forms, the Intro toys offer a single button, with three speeds and three modes. (The Forms have 3 buttons.) It’s a simpler, more user-friendly interface — one that’s less intimidating for beginners.

“I took my own experience from the first time I ever thought about buying a vibrator,” Formoso says. “When my friend showed me a vibrator for the first time… it was beautiful, and it had all these functions. All these modes, all these speeds. And it was great, but it was a little too overwhelming for me, because I hadn’t used a vibrator before.” Formoso hopes that the LiveSexy’s simplified offerings will ease new users into the world of pleasure products, encouraging them to explore and educate themselves.

Ultimately, says Rheaume, the goal is to lock in loyal customers long before they’re able to afford one of Jimmyjane’s pricier products. In the same way that Cadillac might sell a young buyer an ATS in the hopes that they’ll eventually upgrade to a CT6, Jimmyjane sees the LiveSexy line as a way to familiarize younger, or budget-minded, buyers with the designs of high-end offerings. If you’ve fallen for the Intro 2’s two-pronged body and dual motors, you’ll be eager to switch to the more compact Form 2, which offers a rechargeable battery, more modes, and a more nuanced interface.

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