Why Sex Products Are Entering the Beauty and Wellness Space (Glossy)

Read the full article by Priya Rao at Glossy.co

When former Into The Gloss co-founder Nick Axelrod was looking to launch his next beauty act, a direct-to-consumer personal-care brand called Nécessaire with business partner Randi Christiansen, he decided the body-care category was ready for disruption. “Body products are some of the least sexy and uncool out there,” he said.

Nécessaire, which debuted this month and is backed by Imaginary Ventures, Forerunner Ventures and Maveron, is trying to change that. The online-only brand has a limited hero product assortment, which includes just a body wash (that comes in three scents: fragrance-free, sandalwood and eucalyptus), a body lotion and a sex gel — the lineup retails from $20 to $25.

While Nécessaire’s sex gel might seem like an outlier in traditional beauty assortments, co-founder Christiansen said the brand thinks about the body “holistically.” “We went to a CVS store, and we had this aha moment where we thought body [care] did not have to be about just a basic bar of soap,” she said. “If you think about it more broadly, what does it start to include? Why does body wash have to be in aisle 4 and lube was at the very bottom of aisle 12?”

Axelrod and Christiansen are not the only ones thinking about how sexual health products are beginning to infiltrate the larger beauty and wellness categories. Market research firm Technavio reported that the global sexual wellness market is expected to grow to $32 billion by 2019, due to to growing mainstream acceptance.

Dr. Hedieh Asadi, co-founder of Swedish skin-care brand DeoDoc agreed. “Everything in this sexual category has been stuck in the ’80s and made by men in big pharma,” she said. “These subjects and products have been taboo, but women are getting over their embarrassment and wanting better.”