Based on our real cases of our hundreds of clients and their work experience. Blue Rabbit will share with you how to start sex toys business successfuly. This post includes 10 parts, mainly for new adult toys business sellers, if you are a mature seller, you can also use some tips for reference.
1. Make a comprehensive analysis of your competitive advantages before you start
The sex toy business is not new, the competition is very fierce. Before we get started, pls do a full analysis of your competitive advantages and disadvantages.
- Budget: How much you can invest? The budget will determine your business scale and how fast you can set up it steadily. Also, Whether you can handle it when it does not meet your expectations.
- Products: Are you good at the products? Are you good at the industry? If you have a sensitive feeling about the products, you will choose the right sex toys that the market and your customers like.
- Marketing: There are many marketing ways for adult toys. Some e-commerce sites such as Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, Lazada, and official websites. Social media, WhatsApp, offline sex stores, sex parties, sex education, etc.
- Supply-side: Have you gotten a reliable supplier to support your price, quality, after-sales service, shipping, etc?
- Local service: your delivery cost to end-user, your support team, your brand promotion
For all the points we should focus on, you must be competitive on one of two points. Some are good at sales, some have a large number of followers on social media, some have successful experience in the management of e-commercial platforms, some are sensitive to products, etc. We have a client who has a good relationship with his country’s customs. He can import sex toys easily, but for others it is difficult. That’s also an advantage.
2. Focus on some catalogs and products, then make a detailed plan that can be easily carried out by yourself or your partners.
In the adult sex toys industry, there are so many products in different catalogs. like vibrators, dildos, bondage, sexy Lingerie, Anal toys, sex cards game, etc. As a new seller, we should not be too greedy, we should select some sub-catalog to start with, then we can control it at the beginning, and when we have a mature or successful on one catalog, we can copy and expand to another catalog.
After we confirmed the sales range of sex toys. Then we make a specific business plan. It includes budget, sales, import, local service, etc. Your plan must be based on your market and supply investigation. For example, if you are a seller in the UK, the UK sex toys market is very mature. Sex toys are as normal as other consumer goods. We should look for new marketing perspectives, new products, or unique sex toys to avoid fierce competition. If you are a seller from Africa, the sex toys market is developing, and the consumption ability is not so high. Price is one key point in your business plan and it can be changed quickly.
3. I have no team, so how can I start the business with a low budget by myself?
If you want to run the adult toys business by yourself at the lowest cost, you should manage your social media well, your Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Youtube, Even, Reddit, Quora, etc. The fastest way is WhatsApp, this app is your contact, there are some close friends you can trust who support you in the beginning. But it is limited. You should let more people know about your business and trust you.
Your social media must be professional and interesting about sex toys to gain more followers and flows. You should never expect it to happen overnight, it requires you to insist on managing month after month. Then people will trust you more.
Social media marketing is the biggest savings on your marketing costs. you just take the time to manage it.
When you find a reliable sex toys supplier, a lot of your supply-side work will be done by them, saving you costs as well.
You are the brand of your products, social media is just the connection between you and your customers. How fast they make the payment to you depends on how much trust you get from them.
4. How to set up an online website store, and how much does it cost?
Sex toys website store is a necessary step when you want to run a long-term business, it can show your commodities as you wish and introduce you and your company well. Your customers will spend more time doing business with you.
A new website is not expensive. If you want to make your website easier to set up, you can use Shopify. The cheapest plan is 29USD per month. Then you just upload your products for sale. It is the easiest way to build a sex toys website for new sellers. The shortage is that you can’t choose your domain name and realize the more complicated design.
If you or your partner know something about websites, you can build your website. you can buy a domain name on Godaddy, buy a hosting service on Siteground, then build content through WordPress. Finally, you will receive your company email address from this domain. All costs are about 300USD per year. Now, this site is all your own.
5. How to sell sex toys online, which e-commercial site is the best?
Now the online e-commercial business is the mainstream sex toys business. The characteristics of an e-commercial site are: the better the site, the higher the operating costs and commissions. The fact of doing business on an e-commercial site is that you buy traffic from the e-commercial company, and the price is different, the bigger the traffic, the higher the price, because you can buy the traffic quickly.
If you have enough budget and strong team support, you can choose the big and mature e-commercial sites such as Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Wish, and so on. If you can’t afford the big platform now, you can choose some smaller or newly established platforms, these charge a lower commission and are friendly to the sellers. Like Shopee, Walmart, Shopify, and some e-commercial platforms, they are not famous, because they only belong to some countries or regions.
According to the Alex traffic Rank, the most popular e-commercial sites are : Amazon, Ebay, Aliexpress, Walmart, Etsy, Rakuten, Mercado livre, Target, Joom, Jumia, etc.
6. How to advertise and market your adult toys business?
Now you have some budget available to market your business. How to spend them with a high return?
- Google Ads: Google is by far the biggest search website worldwide. You can set up good ads based on a country, specific audience, time, and keywords to get accurate potential customers. But regarding sex toys, the audience has an age limit and must be over 18 years old. Google ads need continuous optimization. And the cost of every deal can go down over time. When your brand has been recognized by the market, the cost is very cheap.
- Social media Ads: Now, Facebook Youtube, and TikTok all have ads for the business. The price is very cheap, you can get big flows from them at a low cost. But how to make the traffic more accurate, you need to learn and practice for a long time.
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Offline media: newspapers, specific magazines. You can set up big promotion ads through them and entice customers to make a deal on your website.
Besides the paid traffic, there are some ways to get free traffic.
- SEO: SEO is a complicated process, and it takes a very long time to get a return. A new website will get traffic return after at least 1 year’s SEO work. And people need professional SEO knowledge.
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Referral traffic: You can get some free traffic from your social media and other big websites.
7. How to open an offline self-service sex toys store?
We talked a lot about the online store. How about the offline sex toys store? Although the online store is mainstream in the sex toys business, the offline market is still big. In China, there are so many offline self-service adult toys stores. The advantage is that the rent is very low, self-service will save labor costs and avoid embarrassing scenes for some shy customers, not to mention the after-sales service.
Let’s briefly introduce its stage:
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Find a quiet place with a high population density, keep enough potential customers, and low store rent. A quiet environment will encourage shy customers to get into the store.
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Do simple but clean decoration to save cost. Install monitors in the store.
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It is important to buy a high-quality self-service machine. The machine will work 24 hours a day, if the quality is not good, you will repair it all the time. The cost is high and gets a bad effect on your business.
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Select your products and update them according to the weekly or monthly sales data.
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Open more stores if you have more budget. The stores will run well.
8. How about the sex toys dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a new business model in recent years. And now it has developed very well. Some end users have accepted it. But every business model has its advantages and disadvantages, you should judge and decide whether you will use it well.
Advantages: The seller hands over the shipping service to the sex toy suppliers, and the sex toy orders are directly shipped by suppliers to the end-user. It will save the shipping cost from the origin to the sellers and the local shipping cost for the end-user. And the time and cost of packing shall be borne by suppliers. Now sellers just need to focus on the marketing. Sellers always keep stock-free to get down the cash-flow pressure.
Disadvantages: The shipping time will be prolonged by about 5-10 days if you do drop shipping from China. Sex toys are impulse consumption products, fast delivery is better for the purchase experience. And the shipping cost of a single item is much higher than bulk wholesale. Some low-value products will not have a price competitive advantage over other items.
In Blue Rabbit’s view, the dropshipping model is a good idea for some businesses, but not for sex toys. Because the price of sex toys wholesale from China is not high. Most sex toys include batteries. The shipping cost of the item is higher than the product value. Yes, dropshipping can reduce business risk, but it can’t make your business bigger, which defeats our original goal.
9. How to find reliable sex toy vendors?
The sex toy supply-side is equally important as the market. A good sex toys supplier can provide your competitive price and cost-effective customization solutions. They will help you save a lot of time and hidden costs throughout the entire process, from product selection to shipping and customs clearance. Here are some sex toys sites we recommend:
Blue Rabbit: With a strong sex toys supply chain in China, it is a strategic partner with some big manufacturers and a valuable client of dozens of small sex toys factories. You can wholesale with low MOQ at factory price. A professional sales team dedicated to new sellers, Blue Rabbit always stays friendly with new sellers and has zero negative comments on customer service. Help new sellers grow through our professional services and guidance.
Alibaba: The biggest B2B business platform worldwide, covering most products and suppliers. You can find any products here. So many options, but will pay some costs until you find a truly trustworthy vendor.
Local suppliers: Some local suppliers have power, especially in countries where customs clearance is difficult, such as India and mid-east countries. Local suppliers offer higher prices than the place of origin, but faster delivery.
For more details on choosing suppliers, please refer to this post:https://cnbluerabbit.com/sex-toys-supplier/
10. What is the development trend of the sex toys market?
The Global economy has been increasing, global culture has become more and more open. People have more money to pursue pleasure. At the moment, there are no other products that can replace sex toys, So the sex toys market will still keep fast growth.
Online sex toy business will get more share from the traditional offline business, mobile app online purchase will be mainstream of purchase ways. Social media live sales is an emerging marketing method.
The sex toys will be more and more Intelligent and of high quality to ensure consumers are safe to use. When there are more choices in the market, the emergence of sex toy brands makes it easier for consumers to make decisions.
FAQ about adult business
It is much easier to start adult business from other industry. because what you should to do is to make more reseaches about sex toys products. market, and main competitors. the other process is the same with other business.
We suggest you start at a niche market related your existing business. for example. your current business is home products. then you can start at the Sex furniture products. if you are doing female body care business, you can start at Female sexual wellness products. then you will be smoothly break into adult business.
So many newers want to make a big deal at the beginning. they imagine that their branded sex toys dominate the adult toys market, like Lelo or other adult toys brand. but really?
we should make it clear this question: market bing good products or good products bring good market?
Actually, Adult toys industry have so many different design products. you can not count it over. but the market is not big. so market is more important than products.
Our suggestion is we test the market firstly, after you have marketing ability, then start the brand customization.
Very high!
In China adult Market, the retail price almost is 4-6 times of the products cost.
if you import sex toys from China then resell in the local Market, the resell price almost at this rate. but you will pay the shipping cost, customs taxes, Marketing cost. but still higher profits than other products.
Summary
The sex toys business is not easy at the beginning, But we should keep the ball rolling, all the difficulties will be overcome and you will find your new way. Then you and your business will grow over time. Therefore, if you have a plan, it will always be a plan unless you carry it out. Getting started and working for it is the most important step. BlueRabbit, a wholesale sex toys supply chain from China, helps and serves to grow your sex toys business.
Thank you Arno.
I found very generous of you to share your expertise with everyone.