Of all the homemade masturbation devices created by many a crafty young lad, very few have what it takes to see the light of day as a viable consumer product. Luckily for the men’s pleasure product sector, one such lad had business chops to match his teenage experiments.
Adam Lewis is the co-founding, male half of Hot Octopuss, the luxury tech brand he operates with business partner Julia Margo. When the pair launched their flagship product, the Pulse Guybrator, Lewis’ background in the corporate world far outweighed his experience in the sexual health sector. Lewis credits his childhood hormones — and later, a lack of decent sex toys for men — for filling in the blanks along the way.
We are now on the fourth iteration of the toy and sales keep getting stronger.
“Ever since I was a little boy, I had experimented with creating unconventional sex toys,” says Lewis. “Whether it was adapting the water jets in my grandparents’ swimming pool, an electric toothbrush or even a close encounter with Henry the Hoover, a funny-looking vacuum cleaner, I would have a go.”
Masturbatory habits aside, and long before founding Hot Octopuss, Lewis spent his teen years in a boarding school. Lewis says his mother shipped him off in hopes of taming his wild personality and securing him a college education, though Lewis credits a spurt of dumb luck for both goals coming to fruition.
“Although I didn’t do very well in school, I managed to get into university,” recounts Lewis. “The university confused my school grades with another Adam Lewis who had also applied for the same course, and they let me in by complete accident. Realizing I had a rare second chance, I decided for the first time in my life to knuckle down and to everyone’s surprise, including myself, I came away with two degrees and a master’s. I was a late bloomer, it seems.”
With diploma in hand, Lewis scored a job in the banking industry, which could not have been a less perfect fit.
“Everyone was too serious and thought way too much of themselves,” he reflects.
Not long after, he transitioned to event planning, sales and management for high-profile conference speakers.
“Although my prior career doesn’t have any direct relevance to the sex toy industry, it did give me the most amazing business foundation, which really helped when I decided to set up Hot Octopuss from scratch,” says Lewis.
As it turned out, Lewis would end up succeeding as a salesman, though his choice of product happened almost as accidentally as his admission to college.
“One day, I decided that rather than using one of my homemade devices, I would look online and purchase a purpose-made sex toy. I was amazed at how little choice there was for me,” Lewis recalls.
“Everything at the time was phallic-looking and tried to replicate human interaction. There was nothing that used technology — specifically vibrations, which is what I liked — and certainly nothing that looked design-led and inspirational,” Lewis says. “At this point, I figured that if I could invent a really good penis toy, that the market was huge.”
Lewis and Margo released the Pulse, aka the world’s first “Guybrator,” into the market. Lewis says the immediate, rave reviews convinced the pair that they were onto something special. Lewis credits Pulse’s success to its novel masturbation experience, which flipped the script on the ol’ jerk routine.
“Pulse more or less completely reinvented male masturbation,” says Lewis. “Rather than the usual up-and-down motion, which we penis owners have been accustomed to for millennia, here came a product that claimed it could make you come hands-free without the need to stroke. You don’t even need to have an erection to use it.”
Lewis and Margo took the Pulse to their first trade show in 2011, but Lewis found it to be a hard sell prior to consumer feedback.
“However, once the samples went out and people started to test it, everything changed and the orders came flooding in,” Lewis remembers. “We are now on the fourth iteration of the toy and sales keep getting stronger.”
The Pulse product family remains among Hot Octopuss’ top sellers, though the company has hit a few more home runs since its inception, such as the Atom Plus, which Lewis says was another “world first” because it has two integrated motors. Lewis and his team also launched their proprietary Treble and Bass technology, a dual-motor design that allows users to switch between higher-pitched and deeper, more rumbly vibrations. Hot Octopuss included these options in the Jett Guybrator and Kurve, the brand’s first G-spot toy.
Over the past two years, Lewis and Margo have followed a strategic business plan to ensure continued triumphs and to maintain focus on the brand’s original mission and ethics.
Lewis points to both veteran staff and new team acquisitions when giving credit for Hot Octopuss’ international recognition.
The company’s very first recruit was April Lampert, global head of sales. Lewis says he became familiar with Lampert through the industry and was thrilled when she applied for the job.
Most recently, the team welcomed Kelly Gordon as head of marketing. Gordon’s unique perspective as a sex educator and wheelchair user has provided invaluable insight as Hot Octopuss seeks to become more inclusive.
Similarly, Lewis also hired veteran sex educator Joan Price to the team after she reached out to the company to jeer their lack of senior citizen product models on the brand’s website.
Lewis predicts that 2023 will be all about “getting back out there.”
“We spent quite a big part of 2022 restructuring our business to be better aligned to our core mission,” he says. “We want our team to be on the road more, delivering more training. It is really important to us that people understand our mission and why we make the products we do and that is all about getting our message out there in the right way. I think we all learned from lockdown that good communication is critical to all of us in this industry!”
As Lewis, Margo, and their growing team look to the future, Lewis finds himself right back where he began, but in the very best of ways.
“Our core mission hasn’t — and won’t ever — change,” says Lewis. “Like many of us in this industry, our core purpose is to deliver pleasure. To us, that means doing as much as we can to reach the ‘harder to reach’ groups of consumers, such as those with disabilities, folks who are older, trans, face sexual challenges or have experienced sexual repression, because pleasure should be for every body and everybody.”
