“We make our products by hand because we want to.”

The colourful dildos of GODEMICHE are made 100% by hand. This new brand from Great Britain has set out to conquer the market and carve out a niche for their products – which shouldn’t be that hard since their dildos and plugs are very different from the bulk of comparable products we see in stores today. The GODEMICHE products also benefit from the extensive retail experience of the people behind the brand – who are also the people behind the www.thatposition.com online shop. Adam Breedon is one of them, and EAN had some questions for him..

Adam, you started your company on the internet, with your online shop www.thatposition.com. Now, you are launching your own product line, GODEMICHE. When did you start contemplating a product collection of your own?
Adam Breedon: Having our own branded products was an idea we wanted to act upon from the very start. What we wanted to create, how we wanted to create it and why we wanted to create it was where the question marks lied. GODEMICHE is our own brand but operates independently to ThatPosition.

Getting from the initial idea to the finished product – how long did this process take, and what were the biggest challenges you had to overcome on the way to realising your idea?
Deciding what we wanted to make was the biggest hurdle and the most time consuming. It had to be something people wanted and liked, something we enjoyed doing and something we could revolutionise or add our own twist to, dildos felt like a natural progression for us. Other than the initial idea, sculpting and moulding can be relatively short taking up to a week to complete, a little longer for more complex designs.

Your new product line or brand is called GODEMICHE. Godemiché is French and means as much as ‘artificial penis’ – or, well, dildo. Is this name emblematic for your product line?
I love branding and the whole process of creating something new, starting with a product and company values I had an idea of how I wanted the brand to be perceived. From there it was simply playing with acronims, words, plays on words and GODEMICHE is the one I kept coming back to. It has a twist of elegance, sounds special and had the added benefit of actually being what we create.

There are literally thousands of dildos and plugs on the market. So the question is: How do make your products stand out from the crowd? How do you offer something new?
We never set out to break the mould, but recolour it, restyle it and make people fall in love with their dildo again. Yes there are literally thousands of dildos out there but consumers keep buying them. Be it a new shape, a new colour, something bigger or smaller each consumer has their reasons for wanting or needing something new. We get creative, try different things, experiment and this was the catolist to standing out. Our Halloween special was limited to only 20 and social media went a little bonkers.

When developing your product line, did you draw from your experience as retailers?
Everything has derived from our knowledge and experience as retailers, from speaking to customers to watching other businesses past and present. Our first three products were chosen because its what we sell most of as a retailer.

How many, and what kinds of products are in this new line at the moment?
Currently we have our flagship product the ADAM, named because I sculpted it and it was the first thing we made. The Peg, a product that is finger sized to comfortably introduce people to anal. Plug-B, a small beginners butt plug and Lance (a fuck stick). The near future will see a longer ADAM, a larger Plug-B with the beginning of 2016 seeing an uncut dildo and some fantasy designs with a twist.

The colour scheme of your products really catches the eye, and it is truly different from most other dildos and plugs out there. What are the challenges of picking a colour scheme for a sex toy line?
The real challenge is understanding why colours don’t always go together. Sometimes its that the colours need to be mixed or poured differently, sometimes its human error other times its personal opinion. The good, the bad, the amazing and the ugly its all personal preference we mix things up and see what our customers think.

What materials are your products made of, and which materials were used for this special colour scheme?
Everything is platinum silicone.

Is it correct that all of your products are made by hand?
Every process is by hand. We hand sculpt the designs, the masters and moulds are all also made by hand, every batch of products we then make are weighed out, mixed and poured by hand. Finally try are all trimmed, washed, baked and packaged by hand.

Your products being made by hand – is that the result of special circumstances, or did you want to set a counterpoint to the flood of industrially manufactured sex toys from Asia?
We make our products by hand because we want to. Making everything by hand is time consuming, it also limits us to how many we can make with our current staff. But we know 100% where everything has came from, what is involved and allows us to have high quality control over our products. Manufactured toys have their place in the market as do artisan/bespoke handmade products.

What can you tell us about the pricing of your brand?
We price our products so they are affordable for everyone. When you take the time to hand craft something from beginning to end you want people to enjoy them and the more the better.

The packaging is a very important element in the marketing of sex toys these days. Instead of putting the packaging front and centre, you have decided to take a different approach – also for the benefit of the consumer. So what can you tell us about your packaging concept?
Our dildos are all hand poured and there for will always be unique in how the colours marble, mix and blend, to put our products in a box would be ludicrous. For us the packaging had to be transparent so customers at markets and conventions can see the vast array of different finishes.
We can put our items into boxes with viewing windows or complete plastic packaging but its a cosmetic and a cost will pass on to the consumer, who keeps dildos in the packaging they were purchased in? So we had wash then bake our products so clean and then package in to sealable clear plastic pouches. The product is the most important, I’d like to have a more robust, shop display packaging but its not a priority for our product at this moment in time.

Which target group do you want to appeal to? What audience are you aiming for with GODEMICHE?
We have no intentions or ambitions to appeal to any one target group or demographic. When it comes to colours our products are completely customisable, customers can pick the colour and the style we then pour it making special to them.

What are your plans for the marketing of your products? Will you only sell them at your online shop, or are they also going to be available from other retailers or even wholesalers and distributors?
Our products are marketed as unique handmade silicone toys – it’s as simple as that. We do also wholesale our products out to other businesses, these items are still completely handmade so time to complete is completely dependant on how much we have on. Usually we expect to have orders completed in 2 to 3 days, orders of 100+ would normally be dispatched in 3 to 4 days.
Our website G-Silicone.com has a wholesale tab for enquires to be made on, we also have a retailers tab where customers visiting our website can then also make purchases form companies stocking our products. We have a retailers tab as customers may want to buy a GODEMICHE dildo with a harness, a masturbator, lingerie or anything else other websites will sell. Distributors we are open to discussions with but not something we have actively pursued yet.

What’s next for GODEMICHE? Are there plans to add more products to the collection? Are there maybe already concrete ideas for new additions? Could you imagine adding other products apart from dildos and plugs?
We have a longer dildo, bigger butt plug and magic wand heads to come almost immediately. Looking towards the beginning of 2016 we will have an uncut dildo, some that do not look like a penis and larger fantasy designs that are not quite what you would expect when you think ‘Fantasy’. We want to expand our range in to male masturbators aiming to add them towards the end of 2016