“There is a lot of interest in core technologies like ours.”

Revel Body ONE and Revel Body SOL – these sonic vibrators are undoubtedly milestones in the evolution of vibrators. Nonetheless, the company behind these products, Revel Body, has decided not to produce any more products of their own. Instead, they want to focus entirely on the development of new vibration technologies which will then be offered to licensing partners to use in their products. Robin Elenga, the founder and CEO of Revel Body, explained the reasons for this change of strategy in our EAN interview.

Why did you decide to turn your consumer sex toy company into a vibration technology licensing company?
Robin Elenga: We founded Revel Body based on an observation that all the battery-powered products in the market used the same vibration motors which caused them to feel very similar and to have the same issues that consumers dislike. It turns out that these same motors are also used in many other applications that require vibration; mobile phones, video game controllers, and many other consumer and industrial products.

While in the market, we have continued to develop our motor technologies to increase performance (power and vibration range) and to remove the many issues that plague current technology including cost, limited performance, power output, efficiency, noise, etc. We have made some stunning progress in terms of power output, efficiency, size and cost. We now build the world’s most efficient and powerful vibration motors.

We have battery-powered motors that produce the same vibration output as the Hitachi wand on 2.4volts compared to 110v for the Hitachi. While we will miss all of the amazing people in the sexual wellness space, we will continue to license or technology to leading companies therein, so we will still be a part of it, just behind the scenes. Our technology brand is RevelHMI and products with our technology inside will be labelled with TrueSonic Technology branding.

What kind of technologies are we talking about here?
We are focused on linear resonating motor technology. Our first generation was in the Revel Body Sonic Vibrators, but we now have several other classes of motors that enable some really interesting new products. We have focused a lot of development effort on improving vibration performance as well as cutting costs.

We have pushed vibration performance, power and vibration range beyond what has been seen before, with some very quiet, small and reliable actuators. We have also focused on cutting costs and have developed some innovative ways to implement these high-performance motors with costs that match existing technology.
Some information about our technology can be found at http://revelhmi.com.

Will you develop and market these technologies yourself, or could you also imagine working with and for other producers?
We will focus internally on developing vibration technologies. We will work with licensing partners to productize these technologies into a large variety of products from pleasure products to mobile phones. We have several ready to go products which we will license out as well as a series of vibration actuators that can be used to develop some really game changing new products. We are looking for partners who can market these products now.

Are you going to acquire patents and technologies from other companies?
We are on the cutting edge developing this technology and there is not a lot of interesting patents that are out there of any quality, so we will remain focused on our own patents unless we find something interesting.

Is there great demand for ‘naked’ technologies? So far, people seem to have focussed on complete products?
There is a lot of interest in core technologies like ours. If you look at mobile phones, the new features are enabled by new technologies like ours. Our motors for these applications will be much smaller so they enable much thinner and smaller phones with smaller battery requirements. But because we can provide much better vibration (more power, broader range of vibration, etc.), our technology will enable HD Haptics which is the third wave of human machine interaction, behind video and sound interfaces.

None of the current vibrator motors on the market can support the requirements of HD Haptics. In the pleasure product world, we continue to think that the primary benefit of a vibrator is vibration, and we can provide much better vibration, with less consumer issues, so we think that our technology will drive tremendous value for our licensor in this market. The market for vibration motors and drivers that we are entering is about $5.6B annually now and will move to $12B in 2020. Our solutions win on size, performance and cost, so we feel pretty good about.

What will you do to protect your technologies? Will you have your inventions patented?
Yes, we have multiple patents granted and many more in progress world-wide. We are moving into the mobile device world, which requires a much higher level of strategy around patents. This is a core focus of our team.

What will happen to the products that are already on the market?
We sold out of Revel Body SOL shortly after we won the AVN Award for Technology in January. We are now completely sold out. We are continuing to sell our remaining inventory of other products as we transition to being a licensing company. We do have two amazing sex toy products that are ready for production which we will license. We will also work to put our technology in future products in the future. So, we will be back.

So will you never launch a complete product again?
Probably not, we will focus on licensing.

What role do you want your new technologies to play in the sex toy market of tomorrow?
We want to help transition the industry from its porno/seedy, commodity-copycat sex toy past where everything is the same, to a mainstream world of high-quality pleasure products that really improve people’s lives in a dramatic, almost medically effective way. We think our technology will help our licensing partner launch amazing new products that will change everything from how people view these products, how people talk about them and how they purchase them. Our technology will enable real brand awareness and mainstream penetration. We think we will be able to power a major leap in market share while also expanding the market in general.