How well do you really know your customers?
Not just what they're buying, but why they're buying it, what matters to them and what they might want next.
It's something worth thinking about, especially in sexual wellness, where the people buying our products and the reasons they're buying them aren't always what we might assume.
And September gave us a few interesting examples of why.
Maude announced its biggest retail expansion yet, with Target and Ulta choosing different products from its range. New research from the Kinsey Institute challenged some familiar assumptions about Gen Z's sex lives. And Sinful showed how its experience selling directly to consumers is helping it expand its wholesale business.
Three very different stories, but each has something to tell us about understanding customers and spotting opportunities.
The beauty aisle is open again, and it's choosing
Maude is rolling out to more than 600 Target Beauty Studios and nearly 400 Ulta Beauty stores in its largest retail expansion to date.
Target launched its new Beauty Studio concept on 10 September, replacing its previous Ulta shop-in-shops. The stores will stock Maude's body and massage oils, massage candles and lubricants, whilst Ulta will carry the brand's Vibe vibrator alongside its lubricant and body oil.
Ulta has bigger ambitions for wellness, too. Speaking at the Barclays Global Consumer Conference in September, CEO Kecia Steelman said wellness could become the retailer's next $1 billion category, with intimate care one of four areas it's focusing on.
The retailer has also been expanding its intimate care range this year, adding brands including PlusOne, Stripes and Playground.
Sephora, meanwhile, has taken a different approach, scaling back its wellness offering. Maude became the first sexual wellness brand to launch in Sephora's US stores in 2023, but several of its products, including the Vibe vibrator, are now available online only.
What's particularly interesting is that the two retailers have chosen different products from the same range. It suggests that whilst both see an opportunity in sexual wellness, they have different ideas about what will appeal to their customers.
Maude's founder, Éva Goicochea, says both retailers approached the brand in the spring, describing the expansion as "a barometer of where retailers are".
And that's worth paying attention to. For brands looking to secure similar opportunities, understanding which products sell, who buys them and why could make a real difference when approaching retail buyers.
What Gen Z's sex lives are telling us
The Kinsey Institute, with funding and support from Playboy and Julie, surveyed 2,373 US adults aged 18 to 29 about sex, dating and relationships.
The headline numbers: 29% had no sexual partners in the previous three months and 19% had never had a partner. Yet only 18% said they were unsatisfied with their sex life. For 43%, money worries made it harder to date or keep a relationship going, and 37% said financial stress had hurt their sex life. Around one in four said online interactions, including messaging, social media and AI companions, meet some of their intimacy or emotional needs.
Of course, this research focuses on young adults in the US, so we can't assume the findings apply equally to UK consumers. But it does raise some interesting questions for sexual wellness brands.
So much of the category's marketing focuses on couples, date nights and gifting. And there's absolutely a place for that. Maude, for example, positions its Target range around creating a mood for couples. But what about people who aren't in relationships, aren't actively dating or simply prefer to explore pleasure on their own?
Could brands be doing more to reach those customers, whether through solo products, more accessible price points or messaging that doesn't always assume there's a partner involved?
The useful next step isn't to rethink your entire strategy based on one US study. It's to look at what you know about your own customers and where there might be gaps.
Are people buying for themselves or as gifts? Does price affect what they choose? Are there customers you're not currently speaking to?
Your sales data might provide some answers, while customer surveys and feedback could help fill in the rest.
The webshop that wants to supply the trade
Sinful, which describes itself as Northern Europe's largest online retailer for sex toys and erotic products, has launched a new wholesale portal. It brings Sinful's existing wholesale offer together in one place and opens it to more international retailers. It offers products from nine of Sinful's own brands, plus a range built only for wholesale, including the Sinful Pleasure collection and a 24 Nights of Pleasure advent calendar, neither of which is sold on Sinful's own webshop. Sinful says demand for the calendar has already exceeded its expectations.
Its senior B2B manager, Stine Grønlund, pitched the offer as "backed by our own experience as an online webshop".
What's particularly interesting is how Sinful is using its experience as an online retailer to support its wholesale business. Years of selling directly to consumers means Sinful has had plenty of opportunities to learn what people search for, which products sell and what customers come back for. That knowledge could be a real advantage when working with other retailers.
It's also developing products exclusively for wholesale, rather than making everything available through its own webshop. That could help give its retail partners something different to offer their customers, without having to compete directly with Sinful on those particular products.
And there's something worth taking away from this for brands, too. Your own website can tell you an enormous amount about your customers, from what they're buying to how their preferences change over time.
The question is whether you're making enough use of that information beyond simply reporting sales.
So what are we taking from September?
Maude's expansion shows how differently retailers can approach sexual wellness, even when they're stocking products from the same brand. The Kinsey research raises some interesting questions about how younger adults are navigating sex and relationships. And Sinful shows how experience gained from selling directly to consumers can help create opportunities in wholesale.
Three different stories, but they all remind us how valuable it is to understand your customers, rather than simply make assumptions about what they want.
Could the information you're already collecting help you make better decisions about your range, your marketing or where you sell? Some answers might already be sitting in your own data. Others might be worth asking your customers about directly.
If a retail buyer asked you tomorrow who your customers are, what they come back for and why, would you have the evidence to answer?