Co-Founder Joe Vela Gets Down And Dirty About What It Took To Build And Sell Emojibator

Dame acquired fellow sex toy brand Emojibator in February in a move that would soon be succeeded by other sexual wellness players, including Foria and Hello Cake, making brand deals to grow their merchandise footprints and talent to win in the challenging sexual wellness category. 

After Emojibator’s sale wrapped up and its co-founder Joe Vela joined Dame as sales director, he felt free to relay his experience building and relinquishing the brand known for its emoji eggplant vibrator. Last month, he took to an entrepreneur Subreddit to divulge some details of the sale terms and what it’s like to work in the adult industry in an “Ask Me Anything” thread that’s drawn more than 400 comments and nearly 450,000 views. 

For busy entrepreneurs without the time to scroll through a lengthy back-and-forth on Subreddit, we’ve pulled together a few of the highlights. 

Launching Emojibator

To get Emojibator off the ground, Vela wrote, “I used $6,000 of my savings and found a reliable manufacturer on Alibaba (lucky first try) and shared my designs. We sold roughly 30k [eggplant] vibrators from 2016 to 2023. My intention was to create a conversation-starting product. Once we went viral we realized we could reach new sex toy customers and affect them in a positive way and remove some of the shame around masturbation in a fun way.

Yes, I found some people on Alibaba and met them via Skype. I made the first payment via Alibaba or Paypal for protection. Ultimately, it was in their best interest to have a continued business partnership than to screw me over.”

He added, “I launched pretty quickly. I took the 80/20 approach. I had a background in tech, so I really just wanted proof of concept that there was a market for this kind of item.

Humor was the initial concept. Laughter strengthens intimacy. Soon after, I learned this brand had the ability to not only break barriers, but to introduce pleasure and re-introduce pleasure to those healing from sexual trauma. The mission became bigger than my initial vision.

Create conversation-starting products that are worthy of being spread word of mouth.”

Marketing A Sex Toy 

“I created a press release and pitched it to editors of major publications. Eventually Cosmopolitan picked it up and I launched the website with their first coverage.

I spent little to no money on ads. I created a product that was the headline itself and relied on organic marketing. 

I spent my marketing budget on riskier 10:1 ideas instead of 2:1 ideas. Sometimes they missed, but when they hit, they had a bigger splash and we targeted tier 1 publications for the headlines we created. One example of a campaign we did: https://www.rollingstone.com/product-recommendations/lifestyle/texas-abortion-bill-sex-toy-brand-emojibator-1325938/

I think humor got us in the door, but the product did its job and represented so much more. We helped customers discover pleasure and rediscover pleasure with approachable and affordable sexual wellness products.

It was a very popular product. We also did a lot with retail. I don’t think we had reviews enabled for a while [therefore there were] only 17 reviews [on the website]. Shopify apps cost add up.

The biggest issue is the censorship on advertisers like Meta. Instagram shadow bans users making it hard to find them organically. It’s actually gotten worse and not better over the last couple of years. I don’t think there is more of a cesspool in this industry than any other. It is a very tight community and many people like to do business old-school style.

The red tape became a barrier for entry to competitors and navigating it creatively became an advantage at some point. Eventually, you just gotta laugh at anyone who has a negative perception at the category because the sales speak for itself.

[There’s] more accessibility in the mass market. We just launched two products in Walmart with Dame and are designing more affordable products for mass retailers. I also think sexual wellness should be thought of as healthcare. The category is going to expand on all sides from high-tech innovations to normalizing female pleasure, i.e., AI adult chat bots to sexuality coaches to developments in sex toy designs to supplements and accessibility of all of these.”

SELLING A BRAND

“I knew that all companies eventually exited, it was just a matter of how and when. I read five books on how to sell your business leading up to the sale: The Art of Selling Your Business, Built to Sell, both by John Warrillow, The 4-hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. I also recommend Contagious by Jonah Berger and Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss, Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman, Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday, The Inner Game of Tennis, and Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Dame’s founder [Alexandra Fine] and I hit it off immediately (we met shortly after my company was founded) and stayed in touch. I loved their aesthetic, their reputation for innovation and their approach to the category making premium products accessible to the mainstream. I always looked up to them

We had ~10% total profit margin and no investors to buy out. I cannot disclose sales numbers. The exit was 1.2X revenue. It was a mix of cash, equity in the acquiring company and comp package for a new role with the acquiring company.” 

DIFFERENTIATING A PRODUCT 

“Tell a good story with your product. Connect to people emotionally. Do something unexpected.

Don’t listen to the haters. Everyone laughed and said, “of course you would do something like this.” Anyone who sneered was likely harboring shame and insecurity or lacking education.

Have patience because things take time and hire good people even if they are most expensive. 

There are some hiring decisions I would have made differently. Hiring quality part-time people is difficult and agencies are expensive. I might have picked a completely different category in retrospect too. Advertising was very difficult and hard to scale.

There were moments of stagnation for sure. I had the luxury of being able to take a step back and spend less hours when I was feeling uninspired and I think that’s totally fine, or shifting energy onto a different project.

Operational cash. Making sure you continue to meet increasing demand each month and manufacture products when you have Net 30 or 60 and late payments incoming.”

WORKING Post-Acquisition 

On how it feels to be sales director of Dame versus co-founder of Emojibator, Vela wrote, “Less stressful and I still have a big voice in the company. The buck no longer stops with me for better or worse. It took some adjusting, but I don’t mind.”