The Secret Foundation Of The Sex Toy Manufacturing Empire
Walking into the mold workshop in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, China, a $2 million injection molding machine is producing limited edition sex dolls. The industry here can be traced back to the 1980s: when companies such as Hamilton Beach in the United States withdrew from the field of sex toys, factories on China’s southeast coast took up the torch of micro vibrating massagers.
“All accessory suppliers can be found within 50 kilometers of Shenzhen,” said Alexandra Fine, CEO of the American sex dolls brand Dame, showing the product anatomy diagram. A sex toy needs to seamlessly combine micro motors, circuit boards and medical-grade silicone. This entire production process may require more than ten years of technical accumulation.”
Hallie Lieberman, an American sex science historian, recorded in “Buzz: A Brief History of Sex Toys“: The Midwest of the United States once had a complete sex toy industry chain, and Wisconsin accounted for 70% of the world’s sex toy production capacity in the 1920s.
During the sexual health revolution and women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s, vibrators were indeed closely related to the sexual interests of both sexes, especially promoting women’s self-awakening in pursuit of private pleasure. This intensified the prejudice of American conservative forces against sex toys. Under various pressures, large American sex toy manufacturers such as Hamilton Beach transformed and focused on other household appliances.
At the same time, the iconic “Magic Wand” The Wand (formerly the Hitachi Magic Wand) debuted in 1968, and the popular vibrator was made in Japan. By 2000, when Vibratex, the Magic Wand’s wholesale distributor, took over distribution and management of the vibrator, the Wand was already being made in China. Ken Herskovitz, Vibratex’s CEO, told the media that sex toy manufacturing began to shift from Japan to China in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Herskovitz said Vibratex, which introduced the equally famous Rabbit Pearl vibrator, also moved production from Japan to China at that time due to lower labor costs and better manufacturing infrastructure. Despite the lack of detailed, authoritative official statistics, several sex toy companies interviewed by the media made it clear that the vast majority of sex toys sold in the United States are made in China. “About 90% of our sex toys are made in Shenzhen and Dongguan, China. ”-Alexandra Fine, co-founder and CEO of American sex toy company Dame, told the media. “They are manufacturing experts in the sex toy industry.”
Fine continued that some parts of the vibrators are more difficult to manufacture. She gave an example: for example, special silicone is needed around the electronic devices to prevent them from melting and deforming due to heat. This is not easy to do, and this is how those experts can produce high-quality products,” she said.
Polly Rodriguez, co-founder and CEO of American sex toy brand Unbound, wrote in a blog post about the impact of tariffs on the company: “The manufacturers in Shenzhen, China are excellent. No other region can match their raw material quality, technology, safety standards, manufacturing processes, delivery speed and price advantages.
