“The idea that men masturbate has been accepted for eons… people talk about it, joke about it and just accept it as a part of life. We want women to be able to enjoy this same sense of acceptance and be comfortable with their sexuality.”

– Suki

You’ve got to be a bit of a geek to come up with the idea of hooking your vibrator up to your iPod… and you’ve got to be an incredibly sexual being to build a sex toy company around the idea of blending a passion for pleasure with a love of music, but for Suki of OhMiBod it’s all a day in the life of an admitted geek girl.

My discovery of OhMiBod has a similar geek girl story; there I was one morning reading one of the many technology feeds that land on my Netvibes page every day, when I stumbled across a short blurb about this “new gadget” for your iPod. I was immediately intrigued… gadgets and iPods are after all right up my alley, but the copy read like an ad for a new plasma screen television that you’d find in your weekly Best Buy circular, but with that awkward kind of nervousness that comes from guys who don’t get laid very often. Clearly these technology nerds who likely spend their days sneaking peeks at Fleshbot in between trying to decide just how bad Windows Vista really is couldn’t possibly wrap their heads around the idea of a woman being able to bring herself to dizzying heights of orgasm while grooving to her favorite iMix! And how could they?

What this product needs I said to myself… is a woman’s touch.

So I got in touch with the wonderful people at OhMiBod and offered to review their product – the original OhMiBod iPod powered vibrator. This is one of my favorite reviews because I just so happened to bring the OhMiBod with me to Paris and I have great memories of that trip, and it’s also still one of my favorite toys to play with. But it’s been a busy year since then, and the innovative geeks at OhMiBod have been hard at work refining their product and launching some truly wonderful sex toys such as the Boditalk and the brand new G-Spot Vibrator which is based on the same technology that made the original such a hit. They’ve also forged some great partnerships with like minded people who understand that sex and sexuality are normal, healthy parts of everyone’s lives, and they’ve also created a fantastic user community which features some of the hippest DJs coming out with some incredibly cool music to use with these toys.

I managed to get some time with the ever-busy Suki before she headed off to Berlin for the Venus show to talk about the birth of OhMiBod, what’s next for this remarkable company, and other things that make geek girls squeal out loud!

nina: The story of how this all started has always fascinated me. Can you talk about where the original idea for the OhMiBod came from?

suki: It’s actually pretty simple! Several years ago I received my two favorite stocking stuffers of all time… my iPod mini and a vibrator. These were gifts from my husband who was traveling a lot at that time… so I had a lot of ‘alone’ time. I found myself using the two together… listening to my music and masturbating… then I started to think about how cool it would be to put these two things together. Also, music and sex have gone together for eons, so they just seemed like the ultimate killer combination. It also didn’t hurt that I’m a techie… a gadget girl at heart! All of these elements led to the creation of OhMiBod.

nina: It seems to me that you were also in the right place at the right time with Apple’s iPod becoming the ubiquitous ‘it’ device – the pairing up seems quite natural. What are your thoughts on the idea that we (women) tend to feel emotional connections to pieces of music, where a certain song can evoke strong memories, or that we tend to enjoy music and sex together?

suki: Yes most definitely. The characteristic that sets OhMiBod apart from other vibrators is that the user can lose themselves in their own music. I think this makes it easier for those women who still may not feel totally comfortable with masturbation or using sex toys or even with their own sexuality to move beyond that and get lost in their music and the fantasies that their music might propagate.

nina: What was interesting for me was that I first discovered the OhMiBod in a short write up in PC magazine, and being a geek girl myself I was completely fascinated by the concept of bringing the two together and I sat there wondering why no one had thought of this before, which of course led to my initial desire to try-out and review the product for myself – and it also seemed at the time that there hadn’t yet been a crossover from the world of gadgets into the world of pleasure products. Can you talk a little bit about how the OhMiBod went from that initial concept to the development of your site as a destination for OhMiBod users? That’s been one of the most impressive things about what you do – that community of users who use your site to exchange playlists, ideas and tips for using the product.

suki: First, let me say that we’re excited that OhMiBod is becoming a cross-over product! We have several iPod accessory stores that carry our products… mainly in Europe where they’re more open to sex and view it as a normal, natural part of life… as it should be. Because OhMiBod is, at the end of the day, an electronic gadget, we knew that our customers would be more inclined to be technology savvy. We had strong feelings that these types of customers would enjoy a community where they could check out other people’s playlists and be able to blog about their own OhMiBod experience. We wanted the OhMiBod experience to go beyond the experience of the vibrator itself and we wanted to give users a place to check out artists making music specifically for our products along with super cool mixes from DJs from around the globe.

nina: I think that philosophy and approach has worked really well, and I completely agree with you that sex and pleasure are normal and healthy parts of life, and encouraging people, especially women, to own their sexuality and pleasure is truly a wonderful thing. But what your approach also seems to encourage is giving your customers a reason to come back to your site again and again so they can participate in that social network, and is also seems that a number of other sites based on the OhMiBod have grown organically around yours, which I think is fabulous for the community! I am curious tho about how the beta testing process worked for you… I mean, you had the idea, you knew it was good, so how did you approach women to give the OhMiBod a try to make sure you had a hit? I know that there are a number of videos out there of Boston area college girls talking about using their OhMiBods!

suki: I think in one of your other questions you asked about how we got from concept to final product… and the beta team played a huge part in that! Basically we started with a prototype. Once we thought we had things nailed down, we did a small production run and distributed the first vibrators to our beta team. The beta team was made up of 500 women… who were friends and family at first, and then it branched out to friends of friends and so on. We worked very hard to recruit beta testers from all parts of the country and age groups, and we then asked them to help us with the naming. We did a short online survey asking them what they thought about the different names we came up with and also, we were able to get open and honest feedback about the functionality of the product and its design. We took all of that feedback and made the necessary tweaks so that OhMiBod could be a truly rock solid product at its launch. The whole process just gave us a real opportunity to work out all the kinks before we shared it with the world. As for the videos we shot of the women in Boston… it was just a fun ‘feet on the street’ video to get people’s reaction to our product. We had a great time filming them and the participants really enjoyed it too.

nina: They’re really a lot of fun to watch too! Okay… OhMiBod isn’t connected to Apple or the iPod, but the obvious play on words and in your marketing is that using your products with the Apple iPod is the way to go and is a good thing… even tho you can use the OhMiBod with any MP3 player , but has Apple ever acknowledged what you guys are up to? I guess the real question is… has Steve (Jobs) given the OhMiBod his personal ‘namaste’? Kind of an “I honor the place where your orgasm and my insanely great product become one…”

suki: Apple does know of our existence, yes… but other than that, we haven’t heard from them. At the end of the day, we give consumers yet one more reason to own an iPod!

nina: lmao! Okay… that’s a great answer. So, you’ve got a lot of really good information on your site about human sexuality and why masturbation is good for you… and it’s very comprehensive, thoughtful and well put together. You’ve also tied this together with the idea of Suki as an icon – that being you. Can you talk a little bit about the ‘philosophy of Suki’ and what that can mean to women everywhere?

suki: ‘Suki’ isn’t really about me at all… she’s an icon that we created to represent the idea behind OhMiBod as a company… she represents how we hope our customers feel when they purchase and use our products. Suki embodies the collective personality of our customers and everyone else with an open, honest attitude toward sexuality and personal pleasure. She’s a symbol of liberation, reflecting new and progressive attitudes of the young and the young at heart… people who are comfortable with their bodies, know what feels good and who, not only, aren’t afraid to admit it, are empowered to go after it.

nina: That’s so fantastic, and quite frankly, this is very much why I identified so much with what you do because that philosophy is exactly what lazy geisha is all about. So what’s next for OhMiBod? I know you came out with the Boditalk which takes pleasure in an entirely new direction. What else can we expect from a company with such liberal ideas about sex and pleasure? Any hints you’d be willing to share?

suki: We recently launched two new products on our website. OhMiBod G-Spot…and Boditalk escort…We are really excited about these products and we hope our customers will be too. G-Spot is the latest addition to the OhMiBod line…it is exactly what its name suggests…it is a music driven vibe with a curved tip to stimulate the G-Spot. Now our customers have two choices when it comes to feeling their music. Boditalk escort is a wearable cell phone activated vibrator, like all OhMiBod products, it can be used with its technology partner or alone in “manual mode”. I believe this product will be a real hit. It is a super cute hot pink bullet with a white controller with chrome accents and a printed design on the front. As far as products not yet released…well…we don’t like to spoil the surprise… but you can expect some super cool designs from us in the new year.

nina: Wow! I can’t wait! So Suki… what else do we need to know about the woman who brought us these wonderful products?

suki: What I really want to share about the philosophy of our company is that by linking OhMiBod to the iconic iPod, my hope is that our products will receive a level of social acceptance that other vibrators haven’t enjoyed. Our packaging is hip, sophisticated and approachable. We want our customers to feel as comfortable purchasing an OhMiBod as they do about purchasing any other iPod accessory. All of these efforts support our quest to help to bring vibrator use more mainstream, making it acceptable and healthy, as it should be. The idea that men masturbate has been accepted for eons…people talk about it, joke about it and just accept it as a part of life. We want women to be able to enjoy this same sense of acceptance and be comfortable with their sexuality.

The world of technology changes so fast that it’s often hard to keep up, but what will always be with us is our humanity and our desire to immerse ourselves in pleasure. OhMiBod tapped into that fast moving stream and has developed products which let us satisfy our innate curiosity while serving our basic human instincts. This is truly a remarkable company because while so many of us are looking for the next best thing, the people at OhMiBod already understand that the best things are the ones we do with our own bodies and with each other. Healthy and safe sexuality is a right we’re born with and our ingenuity will always find ways to expand and enhance the ways we find and take our pleasures. With OhMiBod, you’re already there.

You can check out OhMiBod online here!