It’s hard to make sense of tariffs because things are changing day by day. The only constant seems to be the exorbitantly high 145 percent tariff on China. While President Donald Trump may have exempted tariffs on a handful of electronics over the weekend, like smartphones, laptops, and TVs (though maybe not for long), that doesn’t apply to other gadgets from China, even if there’s a printed circuit board inside, like sex toys.
Sex toy manufacturers are generally bucketed under the “massagers” or “adult” product category when it comes to imports and exports, meaning these companies have been forced to pay a hefty tariff on their goods since April 9. Brands, like Dame, Unbound, and Vibratex, are already feeling the effects, and if things don’t change, there’s a chance some may have to close up shop.
Alex Fine, CEO of Dame, was among the first to publicly address the impact on Instagram. “So far we’ve already had shipments that incurred a 20 percent increase,” Fine tells WIRED. She says the company has been working to minimize how much extra customers pay, but had to implement a $5 “Trump tariff surcharge” on all orders. “A 54 percent increase in cost of goods sold would have put Dame in the red last year, and at 125 percent, I’m not going to even do that math.” That was before Trump raised the tariff to 145 percent.
Photograph: Unbound
Polly Rodriguez, CEO of sex toy brand Unbound, says a vibrator that previously cost the company $30 now has a tariff cost of $44, bringing the total to $74. Tariffs are now Unbound’s largest expense as a business, higher than payroll or manufacturing.
Some companies are playing it cool for now. “At Le Wand and b-Vibe, we’re taking a measured approach to the tariff situation,” says Alicia Sinclair, CEO of COTR Inc., the parent company behind both brands. “While our products are manufactured in China, meaning tariffs will certainly impact our cost structure, we’ve deliberately maintained sufficient inventory to give ourselves time to evaluate the situation properly.”
The consensus from many of the companies I spoke with was that there’s a lot of uncertainty in the air, and prices are already up. Samantha Marshall, head of brand and marketing at Smile Makers, says the company has already raised prices, as the tariffs are too high to be fully absorbed by retailers. Vibratex, the parent company that distributes the iconic Magic Wand, deals with retailers more than direct customers, and Ken Herskovitz, the company’s CEO, says it plans to absorb portions of the increased wholesale cost.
If these tariffs remain, it won’t just mean spending more money on sex toys, but possibly seeing your favorite sex toy company go out of business. “There are two things that will happen without question,” says Rodriguez. “Small businesses will go under, as many of us cannot bear a cost increase this large. The businesses that can endure will have no choice but to increase prices, which we’re already seeing.”
Like Le Wand, Rodriguez says Unbound has inventory in stock, but tens of thousands more are on their way to its warehouse in the US. She says the company will do everything it can to limit the impact on pricing. “Unbound was built on the belief that sexual wellness products should be accessible for all, and we have always defined that as being well below $100. It is still our goal to maintain that threshold.”
Both Fine and Rodriguez pointed out how the tariffs will affect small businesses the hardest, as they do not have the resources of big tech corporations to get exemptions, even if they’re temporary. “From where I’m sitting, it will come down harder on female-founded businesses, because so many of them are beauty and wellness-related,” Fine says.
