What was once sold behind discreet doors is now appearing in mainstream shops, beauty stores and smartphone apps. Vibrators sit alongside cosmetics, intimate-care products are promoted through livestreams, and erotic audio has become a subscription business. Sexuality, once treated largely as a private subject, is increasingly being packaged as wellness — and the market is growing rapidly.
The transformation is illustrated by the story of Julie Lepique, the 32-year-old founder of Femtasy. Almost a decade ago, during a dinner with friends, conversations about their love lives turned towards the shortage of erotic films that appealed to women. Existing material, Lepique recalled, was largely designed by men for men, with imagery that was often too explicit and left little room for personal imagination.
Then one friend described her workaround: she would play a pornographic film on her smartphone, turn the screen over and simply listen to the voices and sounds, allowing her imagination to fill in the rest.
For Lepique, it was an idea waiting to become a business.
At the time, podcasts and audio entertainment were developing into a mass market. Yet Lepique found little erotic audio content beyond a Reddit post by a Texan who had uploaded private dirty talk. The reaction from women in the comments caught her attention. They praised his deep voice and asked whether he could record more.
Lepique borrowed money from her father, began a study and recruited women through social networks to discuss their fantasies. She says she conducted 1,500 interviews. At 23, she left her job at Xing and founded Femtasy, described as the first streaming platform for erotic audio content.
The idea was initially met with disbelief. People around her questioned who would advertise such a business, which bank would open an account for it and whether anyone would pay for a subscription. She was even prevented from putting a notice on an acting school to find voices for her productions.
Eight years later, the business looks very different. Femtasy now offers 3,000 audio productions and has more than two million users. In May, the Bundesverband Deutsche Start-ups named Lepique founder of the year 2026. The company is not yet profitable: it reported a deficit of around €1.1 million in 2024. But Lepique says its turnover is already in the eight-figure range and that since 2020 Femtasy has financed its growth entirely from operating cash flow.
Her story forms part of a much larger transformation documented in German media, including Spiegel, where coverage has tracked the changing relationship between sexuality, commerce and social attitudes.
The roots of that transformation stretch back decades. In December 1962, Beate Uhse opened a shop in Flensburg called a “specialist shop for marital hygiene”, widely regarded as the world’s first sex shop. Initially, the business sold educational books and contraceptives. The reaction ranged from hundreds of criminal complaints to praise for a figure seen as part of a sexual revolution.
The commercial environment today is almost unrecognisable. Vibrators, lubricants and condoms no longer necessarily belong behind closed doors. Online retailers such as Amorelie, Eis.de and EasyToys, alongside mainstream platforms such as Amazon and Otto, have made access easier, while drugstores have expanded their ranges.
Analysts cited in the source material estimate that the global industry now generates around $35 billion in annual revenue, with the market expected to grow by more than 50 per cent by 2031.
The change is not simply about products. Sexual satisfaction is increasingly presented as part of a broader concept of health and wellbeing, associated with relaxation, personal wellbeing and mental balance. Popular culture, including Sex and the City and Bridgerton, has also contributed to a more open discussion of sexuality, self-determination and women’s roles.
In the United States, celebrity culture has accelerated the process. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop began as a newsletter in 2008 and later expanded into wellness, mental health, fitness and sexuality. Its shop eventually sold products including vaginal jade and rose-quartz eggs, while the company became associated with increasingly provocative forms of commercialised wellness.
Other celebrities followed. Harry Styles developed a vibrator for his Pleasing cosmetics brand with a sexual educator. Christina Aguilera became a co-founder of Playground, which sells vegan lubricants. Dakota Johnson invested in Maude, a lifestyle brand producing minimalist sex toys and intimate-care products.
Germany has produced its own major players. Lea-Sophie Cramer and Sebastian Pollok founded Amorelie in 2013 with the aim of creating a stylish online shop focused on relationships while challenging the traditional image of sex shops and placing women at the centre of the customer base.
The company’s rise coincided with a broader shift in the appearance and marketing of sexual products. The old image of dark shops, video booths and black-and-red branding has given way to brighter, more playful presentation.
The Womanizer became one of the industry’s most successful products. Developed by Bavarian engineer Michael Lenke, the device used pressure-wave technology to stimulate the clitoris. Lenke had been influenced by research into the so-called orgasm gap and wanted to address the disparity in sexual satisfaction between women and men in heterosexual relationships.
The business grew dramatically. Johannes Graf von Plettenberg, who became involved with the company after deciding to acquire it when a larger corporate buyer declined, eventually expanded the operation through further investment and an acquisition in Canada. In 2021, the Wow Tech Group merged with British competitor Lovehoney. Lovehoney now generates around €300 million in annual revenue, employs more than 850 people in nine countries and is described by Plettenberg as the world market leader.
The transformation has reached intimate care as well. In 2020, Katharina Trebitsch and Anna Kössel founded Berlin-based Nevernot, seeking to apply the standards of modern skincare to intimate products. Their range includes lubricants, oils, peeling sprays and foams, with ingredients promoted as vegan and pH-optimised.
The company has also encountered the limits of digital openness. A massage candle named “Life happens, orgasm helps” became difficult to promote because words such as “orgasm” triggered restrictions on platforms including Instagram, where algorithms and guidelines classified the material as pornography.
Even established consumer brands have entered the market. Weleda launched Vlora+, its first intimate-care range in its 105-year history, with gynaecologist and author Sheila de Liz. Chief executive Tina Müller said the aim was not to solve a medical problem but to create a product associated with wellbeing. The launch nevertheless triggered criticism over fragrance and price, although Weleda and de Liz said the products had been dermatologically and gynaecologically tested and formulated to be microbiome-friendly.
Müller’s own experience reflects how quickly attitudes have changed. During her time as chief executive of Douglas, the company tested selling sex toys in its physical stores. The response was uncomfortable: Müller recalled that the vibrator counter proved too much for customers, many of whom hurried past without touching the products.
Today, Douglas sells sexual and intimate-wellness products online, including the Womanizer.
The generational shift may be the clearest measure of the change. Femtasy says 95 per cent of its listeners are aged between 22 and 44, but Lepique says the average age is rising. Younger consumers, she argues, can influence older generations by demonstrating that experimentation and openness need not be confined to youth.
From Beate Uhse’s controversial shop in 1962 to livestreamed intimate-care sales and multinational sexual-wellness companies, the commercial history of desire has moved decisively into the mainstream.
The taboo has not disappeared completely. But the business built around overcoming it has become a multibillion-dollar global industry — and, increasingly, a business that sells not simply sex, but the promise of wellbeing.
