How Much Do Online Adult Toys Business Owners Make?

Do you want to know the profit of an online adult toys business? If yes, this blog cum guide will help you gain a deep insight into how much an adult toy business owner can make. The U.S. sex toys market was estimated at USD 9.9 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.19% from 2024 to 2030. 

Based on product, the U.S. sex toys market is segmented into vibrators, dildos, penis rings, anal toys, masturbation sleeves, bondage, sex dolls, etc. In 2023, the vibrators segment witnessed the highest revenue share of 22.76%. It is expected to witness the fastest CAGR from 2024 to 2030. You can also be a part of this growth if you start selling sex toys online, but before that, go through this guide to understand more about the costs involved and the expected profit margin. 

Is a Sex Toy Business Worth It?

In case you are confused and can’t decide if a sex toy business is worth it or not, we will guide you in this by discussing some facts that can help you decide on what you should do next.

• Increasing Market Demand – The adult sex toy industry has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years. According to research by Research and Markets, the global sex toy market is expected to reach more than US$54 billion by 2026. This tremendous growth is due to increased acceptance and openness towards sexual pleasure products
• Changing Cultural Attitudes – Social attitudes toward sex toys and pleasure are evolving, resulting in a more accepting and open-minded way of thinking about sexual needs and buying sexual wellness products. The stigma attached to sex toys is on the decline, and the demand for high-quality and innovative sex toys that can meet different sexual needs is on the rise. 
• Online Retail Opportunity – The Internet has revolutionized how consumers shop for adult products, offering a more convenient and private way to buy sex toys from e-commerce platforms. The data generated during the whole process enables adult sex toy business owners to access global markets through marketing strategies for specific demographics. 
• Potential for a niche market – The sex toy industry offers many opportunities for niche specialization. Whether catering to specific tastes, preferences, or demographics, there is a market for just about every adult sex toy niche. By identifying the high-demand, less saturated segments and providing high-quality products, entrepreneurs can create a profitable niche for themselves.  

Online Adult Toys Business Profitability

The profit margins of various sex toy business models can vary significantly compared to other retail sectors. While we don’t have the exact number to compare due to the vast and growing market of adult toys, business owners get a profit margin between 30% to 60% by selling sex toys. With the growing demand for sex toys globally, many e-commerce stores have entered the market, which allows users to discreetly purchase the sex toys they like without having to interact with any salesperson about the same. 

Now, let’s see if an online sex toy business makes more profit or if an offline store does. Here, we will discuss more common factors that are directly related to profit-making in an adult sex toy business:

Factors in Online Adult Toy Business-

• Low inventory management cost
• No rental cost or physical store expenses
• Fewer staff requirements
• Low utility expenses

Factors in Offline Adult Toy Business- 

• Lack of private browsing experience for a user
• High utility costs
• High inventory management cost
• A customer gets less privacy 

From the above factors, it is clear that an online setup gives customers privacy and more stock browsing options compared to an offline store. All these factors affect the profitability of sex toy businesses in the industry. 

10+ Key Factors that Contribute to the Success of an Online Adult Toy Store 

To run your sex toy business successfully, you have to consider various factors that can impact your adult toy business. Working towards making the factors suitable for your business can boost your sex toy business.  

1. Quality Of Your Sex Toys 

‘Quality’ is what distinguishes your sex toys from the adult toys of other businesses. It is also crucial when it comes to retaining your customers, as anyone will want to buy only high-quality adult toys. It is recommended that you make sure that your business offers good-quality sex toys to your customers as an owner of a sex toy business.  

2. Variety of Sex Toys 

Although the sex toys industry is vast and there is room for all types of sex toys, business owners can select a niche and start their business. Being a sex toy business owner, you need to keep yourself updated with the trending sex toys in the market. Customers will obviously search for hot-selling/trending sex toys, and you don’t want them to turn back due to the unavailability of products.  

3. Branding of Sex Toys 

People often confuse branding with marketing. Branding is a strategy to improve customer trust and your market reputation. Branding doesn’t highlight the products or services your business provides but the value you provide to your customers or the problem you are addressing for your customers. Proper branding of your sex toys is necessary as it would help your customers better connect with your brand. 

4. Adult Toy SEO 

To help your adult toy e-commerce website perform better in search engine results and drive more traffic to your online adult toy store, you need to follow a set of best practices collectively known as Adult toy SEO. The best practices include everything to help crawlers collect better information from your site, doing everything possible to off-page to boost your site, and meeting all the technical requirements to improve your website’s organic ranking. 

5. Discounts and Offers

Giving discounts and offers plays an important role in the success of an online adult toy business. It helps attract customers and can be effective in reaching new customers who might have bought from other websites but got attracted to your site because of your amazing offers and discounts. This will increase sales and give your adult business a competitive advantage due to the low prices of your products. 

Apart from increasing sales, giving discounts to your customers builds a sense of trust, as customers feel they get good value for their money and buy products at low prices. This strategy can also help you clear out old inventory and make space for new products. 

6. Stock Management

One of the key factors that contribute to the success of your online sex toy business is the availability of stocks. From the customers’ point of view, they get to select sex toys from a wide range of products when you manage your stock properly. It also gives you an extra edge over your competitors, as customers with different fantasies are more likely to get their desired sex toy from your online store. 

A well-managed stock also helps improve your brand reputation, as customers appreciate the varieties of sex toys your adult toy store offers. Needless to say, with all these satisfied customers, your sex toy business also witnessed an increase in its revenue.

7. Shopping Experience 

The most important factor contributing to the success of your online sex toy business is users’ shopping experience. A website that allows easy navigation and has features like adding products to carts, saving the products for later purchase, etc., gives a good shopping experience. Adding in-detail product descriptions of your sex toys also improves the purchasing experience, as users will be well-informed on how to use the sex toys they want to purchase.  

8. Reviews & Testimonials

Reviews and testimonials play a vital role in the success of your online sex toy business. Good reviews are like a badge of honor for your sex toy brand, which every potential customer will view before purchasing sex toys from your website. As an adult toy business owner, your focus should always be on providing customer satisfaction and making your customers review their shopping experience. 

Apart from that, good reviews help build trust in your potential customers and give a physiological push to customers who are still confused about whether to purchase sex toys from your website or not. 

9. Packaging and Delivery

Your customer may demand or wish for discreet packaging from your side while delivering the sex toys they purchased from your adult toy store. Sex toys are still considered a taboo subject by a large group of people around the globe. So, it is your social responsibility to deliver their sex toys with discreet packaging. 

10. Payments and Refunds 

After the long journey of browsing a sex toy among a variety of other sex toys and adding the sex toy to the cart for purchase, you don’t want your potential customers to face issues while making the payment. As a business owner, you should find the best payment gateways available in the market to give your customers a great purchasing experience. In case of refunds, be vigilant in processing the refunds of eligible customers or else it may harm your brand reputation. 

11. Customer Service 

Customers may have questions or concerns about products, and well-trained customer service representatives can provide valuable product insights. This knowledge helps customers make informed decisions based on their needs and preferences, making them feel confident in their purchase and enhancing the overall shopping experience.

Order problems such as damaged goods, incorrect delivery, or declined payments may also arise. The customer service department’s prompt and effective problem-solving shows that the brand is committed to customer satisfaction. 

How Much Do Online Adult Toys Business Owners Make?

When you start an online adult toy business, you need to consider many factors that affect its net profit. The net profit an online sex toy business owner makes is calculated by subtracting the cost of the business from the total revenue earned. These costs involve marketing, operation, inventory management, packaging, shipping, and legal licensing costs. 

According to industry research and market analysis by Finmodelslab, a sex toy business owner makes around 15% to 25% net profit after deducting all the costs of running the business. If we take an estimate, a sex toy owner can easily make a profit of $100,000 to $500,000 if the owner keeps on delivering on selling quality sex toys and works on implementing strategies to reduce the cost of business. We will discuss some sex toy brands and reveal their revenue, depending on which all the estimations are made. 

Revenues of Top Sex Toys Brands

Let’s examine some of the top sex-toy-selling brands and the revenue they generate to better understand ‘How Much Do Online Adult Toys Business Owners Make?’

1. Lelo – It was founded in 2003 by three Swedish designers who wanted to create products that combine luxury and technology. Lelo sells its own branded sex toys specializing in FemTech, FemCare and Condoms. Its toys maximize your pleasure with 100% waterproof materials made of hypoallergenic silicone and ABS thermoplastic.

Lelo’s headquarters are in Stockholm, Sweden and its toys and condoms are sold in more than 160 countries worldwide. One of its most famous luxury products is a 24-carat gold-plated vibrator, which costs around US$15,000. The company witnesses over two million monthly visitors and has an estimated annual revenue of $25M-100M. 

2. We-vibe – Founded in 2003, We-vibe is most popular for its rechargeable couples vibrator. Based in Berlin, Germany, We-vibe is part of the WOW Tech group. It is one of the largest innovative sex toy companies, and its vibrators are body-safe. We-vibe sells around 6 million couples vibrators on every continent.

Customers can use the We-vibe app when they want to play with the couple vibrator they bought from the sex toy site. Couples can wear Chorus, a hands-free duo vibrator, during sex to immerse themselves in their intimate moments, giving them a sensual feel. With over 4 lakh visitors to their online sex toy store each month, We-vibe has an estimated annual revenue of approximately $13.8 million. 

3. Lover Stores – It was founded in 1981 by a mother-daughter duo, namely Phyllis Hepenstall and Chris Butt. LoversStores was one of the first sex toy stores founded by women at a time when men dominated the entire business. It currently has 41 stores in 5 US states, with an estimated annual profit of over $5 million and over 350,000 visitors returning every month.

Lovers Afterglow rewards members with 20% off on their purchases on the first Tuesday of every month, no matter what. That implies that every online and in-store item will be discounted on that day. Lovers brings its communities together and educates them about sexual positivity. 

By now, you must have an understanding of how much money you, as a sex toy owner, can make. Revenue generation from a sex toy business depends on various factors, and a good entrepreneur will apply the required strategies to control these factors to maximize profits.

What are the costs involved in an Online Sex Toy Business? 

As we have already read by now, from starting a business to running it, there are some unavoidable costs involved that every sex toy business owner has to bear. Here, we will discuss some of the factors that add to the cost of your adult toy business:

1. Inventory Costs/Manufacturing Costs – It is one of the most common costs in a business. In case you are outsourcing sex toys from manufacturers, you need to take care of the materials used by the manufacturer in the production of these sex toys. You have to source a variety of sexual products, accessories, lubricants, and other related items to offer an attractive range of sex toys to your customers.  

2. E-commerce Platform – If you want to sell your sex toys online, you need an online platform that allows your customers a smooth surfing experience and a payment gateway that helps them pay and place orders. To perform all these, you need to spend money on website development and UX/UI and pay for server hosting. If you choose to build an e-commerce site from scratch, it would take a big investment and more time.

If you want to save a significant amount of your usual cost, you can use an e-commerce website script.  xMarketplace by Adent.io is a ready-made adult e-commerce website software that can help you launch an adult sex-toy-selling website within a matter of days and at a very low cost. 

xMarketplace comes with a wholesale dropshipping API that is integrated with popular dropshippers like Sex Toy Club and Inventory Source. This API gives you access to 20,000+ products to start your dropshipping journey. 

3. Marketing Expenses – To make your products visible to potential customers, you need to hire a marketing team, or if you are a marketer yourself, you need to design strategies to improve your ecommerce platform’s ranking in search engine results. The tools you need to perform social media campaigning will have monthly subscription fees, and if you want to partner with an influencer, they will charge a good amount of money for the same. 

4. Packaging and Shipping Costs – Wherever your customers place orders in your e-commerce platform, you need to pack the sex toys and ship them to the delivery agents. In the sex toy industry, it is considered good practice to use discreet packaging to pack the ordered items. You need to spend some money to source the materials for discreet packaging and also need to invest in the shipping operation of the packed orders.  

5. License Fees – Starting a sex toy business will require you to comply with some regulatory laws, depending on the region where you operate. All these will require you to invest in the legal process and license fees. 

Wrapping Up

As we have reached the end of the article, you must have a good understanding of why the sex toys business is worth it, what kind of probability you can expect from your online adult sex toy store, and what are the key factors that decide the profit of a sex toy business. You also got an estimate of how much you can make as an adult toy store owner. 

We have also discussed the costs of launching a business and running day-to-day operations to earn profit. A cost-saving solution has also been discussed; using xMarketplace by Adent.io can help entrepreneurs like you launch an adult e-commerce business in a matter of days and with less investment.