VIP Interview With Brian Sloan Founder & Owner of Very Intelligent Ecommerce Inc

Brian Sloan is an entrepreneur taking the world by storm with sex toys and masturbation aids. After successfully completing law school, he turned himself into a wildly successful businessman and sex toy designer. Believe it or not, it all started when he bought and sold antiques. He ran into some questionable trouble with the law when he sold human skulls online. He wanted to do so much more and became a sex toy inventor who is now well known for designing an incredible range of products including Autoblow 2, 3fap, Slaphappy, Wall Balls and the Lifetime Silicone Stroker. To top all that off, he successfully crowd funding 4 of these campaigns through Indiegogo.

Now, lets talk about his number 1 product Autoblow 2! Autoblow 2 had raised $374,153 in total funds, Brian Sloan raised 622% more than what he originally had set himself out to need! This meant over 100,000 men owned Autoblow straight off the bat.  What made Autoblow 2 different from other sex toys in the market was that it used spring-loaded beads to create an automated system that provides tight stimulation. So much so that Playboy Magazine produced a 8 page article that about his amazing adventure into the world of adult products. It is currently one of the most realistic robotic and automated oral stimulation systems available. What makes the design process amazing is that Brian analyses how to make them better.

Tell me about yourself

I’m Brian Sloan, the founder and owner of Very Intelligent Ecommerce Inc, the company that makes the Autoblow 2, 3fap, the Lifetime Silicone Stroker and other sex toys for men. I invent the devices and am best known for my viral marketing online including 4 Indiegogo crowdfunding campaigns (Auoblow 2, 3fap, Slaphappy, and Wall Balls).

What inspired you to create Autoblow?

I knew that what men really wanted in terms of a masturbation product is not just one that replicated the feeling of their penis going into a mouth or a vagina or anus, but instead the psychological feeling of someone else causing them to have an orgasm. At the time I invented the first Autoblow in 2008, automated technology for men was very basic and there were no products to give men hands-free orgasms.

I decided in 2011 to start developing the first automatic sex toy for men that was built not as a toy, but as something more like a kitchen appliance. This meant I chose robust mechanical parts that were designed for hundreds of hours of use; something you’d normally not expect in a sex toy, especially at that time. Based on how many of the original Autoblow products we sold, I knew if I could fix everything that was not great about it, I would have a product that potentially millions of men would enjoy.

So I took 3 years to develop it, making several improvements in features lacking in all other male sex toys such as the use of interchangeable sleeves that come in 3 sizes and the use of a motor that is so powerful, it needs to be plugged into a wall outlet during use.

How did you make the change from lawyer to adult sex toy extraordinaire?

Long story short I started a business during law school buying things from antique auctions and selling them on eBay. After graduating from law school I realized I had more potential growing my business than slaving away as a lawyer, so I expanded the business to buy and sell goods from bankruptcy auctions as well. Eventually that became too limiting and I needed a product I could import from China that was in demand but difficult to buy. I started at first in the adult industry by creating and importing my own brand of latex fetishwear, specifically catering to the more niche latex fetishes like inflation fetish and extreme bondage.

Once I started in the fetishwear industry, I realized that virtually every sex toy company in the world was run by someone over 50 years of age who didn’t understand how to market online, and so I decided to go all in and start building toy brands and ecommerce websites.

I moved to China in 2007 and spent 10 years there building up my business. Today we run websites in 12 countries and our products are sold in more than 2000 stores worldwide. In the end, working as a lawyer is a very inefficient way to make money and it causes most law practitioners to be very unhappy people. I think I made the right choice.

What inspires you?

The philosophy of Ayn Rand.

When you raised funds with Indiegogo what did you learn about your consumer?

A lot of people ask me to somehow identify our core customers, and the truth is there isn’t any particular type of customer who buys the Autoblow 2. From our emails with them we know they run from 18 to 90 years of age and their marital situations, sexual preferences, penis sizes, and socioeconomic status run the entire range of human experience.

Indiegogo amplified our reach because things on crowdfunding platforms are usually the first of their kind and the online media likes to write about new types of products. The platform is excellent at reaching people who are interested in being pioneers in trying the newest kinds of gadgets.

What makes Autoblow an amazing men’s masturbator?

First, I don’t claim that the product is amazing. I only claim (and of course believe) that it is better than all other competing automatic products. I will likely spend the rest of my life continually improving the product and one day I hope to be able to honestly say it is “amazing”. Until then I am satisfied that each release is the best available automatic masturbator.

What sets it apart is first, its power. Normal electronic masturbators use batteries, and batteries cannot provide enough torque to continually stroke a penis without stopping. Because the Autoblow 2+ plugs into the wall outlet while you use it, it is able to use a much more powerful motor that continually strokes and does not stop even under a heavy load.

Second, while all penises are different sizes, male sex toys normally come in only a single size. Uniquely, the Autoblow 2+ uses 3 sizes of interchangeable sleeves that are not only easy to clean, but also ensure that every man will experience the same level of tightness in the machine regardless of his penis girth.

Finally, like Apple with the iPhone, every couple of years we aim to release an improved version of the product.  What sets us apart is that we email all of our old customers to purchase the newest version at a steep discount. No other brand values its customers so much that once they make a single product purchase, for life, they will always pay 25-50% less for the most updated version of the product.

Who should buy Autoblow and who should buy 3fap?

One negative point about the Autoblow 2+ is that it’s not silent. It is motorized product that cannot be used discreetly, for example, if someone was located in the next room, they would hear the motor. The Autoblow is great for guys who aren’t concerned so much about masturbating in complete silence and can trade discretion for the great sensation it provides.

3fap, our other crowdfunded masturbator, is a hand-operated totally silent masturbator better for guys who need silence during their sessions. If guys never heard about it, they can google it – it’s a relatively large hand-held stroker that gives guys 3 orifices, 3 different textures, and 3 levels of user-controlled suction on a single product!

How do you go about choosing a beautiful body part for a men’s masturbator?

First, I didn’t think it would be a good business decision to choose a female part myself because I am only a single person and I have no way to know what millions of men think. So that’s how I got the idea to hold a competition where women would upload photos of their vulvas, and people could vote on them so that I could be sure to replicate only the most attractive ones. The contest was called, unsurprisingly, the Autoblow Vaginal Beauty Contest.  Although some would claim otherwise, it is in fact reality that there are different preferences on vulva appearance and I’m happy that my research and later the scientific paper we published on the topic added something valuable to human knowledge on a seldom studied topic.

You have hosted a vaginal beauty contest, a scrotum beauty contest and an anus beauty contest. Choosing the ideal look of a men’s masturbator sleeve must take some time. What makes a beautiful vagina, scrotum and anus?

Well, we published two papers on this topic, The Vulva Paper and The Balls Paper. We did not publish a paper detailing the results of the anus contest.

Long story short, men preferred, overall, vulvas with minimally protruding labia that were not very wrinkly. On the other hand, the results of the balls contest showed that there was no such thing as an attractive scrotum. All scrotum styles rated equally low in scores.

Regarding the anuses, we felt that a scientific paper would not be valuable to produce because it was clear that all female anuses rated higher than male anuses, and the highest rated female anuses also prominently displayed vulvas. So in fact we think the appearance of the vulvas influenced the anus scores.

We also learned interesting data regarding the voters in the contest based on their IP addresses. For example. Hungarian voters were the least fair voters in the world, assigning the highest scores to participants from Hungary. On the other hand, the Taiwanese voters were the most fair, as the data showed they did not assign higher scores to participants just because they were also from Taiwan.

What is the process of making the realistic moulds of the Autoblow?

We were the first sex toy company to use 3d scanning to replicate female genitalia onto sex toys. That allowed us to capture the details down to within microns of accuracy. There’s actually a video that shows the process:

After the 3d scan, the data was transferred to a factory that created a mold based on the 3d scan data. Later after testing, more molds were made from that mold, and as the sleeves themselves are made from a kind of rubber, we pour the materials in, and 12 hours later, the sleeves dry and are ready for penises.

What are your favourite appearances in the media?

I think the article from the June 2016 Playboy Magazine, the article from Maxim with 43,000 shares, the Buzz Feed post from the very beginning and the interview on Business Insider are my favorites.

Where will you be taking Autoblow in the future?

We’ve been working on the Autoblow 3 already for nearly 2 years. Finally by the end of 2018, it should be ready. In that same way that I listened to all complaints about the original Autoblow and tried to fix those issues in the Autoblow 2, I am listening to all of my customers about what they would want to be improved in the Autoblow 3.

Mainly we are investing our time into making the product quieter and improving the stroking mechanism so that it is tighter and creates even more friction. That requires a full re-design. The most challenging part is improving the product but keeping it below $200 retail, which we think we will be able to do.