The Revel Body: A Startup That’s Crowd-Funding Pleasure

Apr 19, 2013 • Lifestyle, Toys •

The Revel Body Sonic vibrator

Revel Body is a Seattle-based start-up looking to revolutionize the world of sex toys with a completely reimagined approach to the vibrator. Earlier this year, they launched an Indiegogo campaign to help crowdsource the $50,000 needed to get their sonic vibrator into production. With a little help from Guy Kawasaki and Techcrunch, they have raised $79,878, with almost two weeks still left in their campaign.

What makes the Revel Body so special? It’s the vibe — and by that, I’m not talking about the spherical design, but the actual vibrating portion of the piece. “We decided to innovate on vibration motor technology when we observed that all of the existing battery-powered vibrators use the same vibrating motors and that these motors operate in a very small fraction of the range that people can feel,” the creators write. Ignoring the preferred motor of the sex toy industry, the team focused on the resonating technology that power sonic toothbrushes.

Of course, unlike sonic toothbrushes, the Revel Body enables users to control the pressure and pattern of vibration. The result, when compared to the toys out there, is a vibe that is 50 percent more powerful, offers a range of 200 percent more sensations and is 90 percent quieter. The best part is that this startup isn’t here to win them all — they fully intend to work with other companies and allow people in the sex toy industry to use their motor technology.

It’s not hard to see why everyone is jumping on the bandwagon — and you still can, too. Donating $130 in the next twelve days will get you your very own sonic vibe to try (about $49.00 in savings from retail, and free shipping to boot) when they are released in late summer.

  • KimberlyChapman

    Well I’m all for promoting sexual health and women having pleasure time and all of that, and boy howdy I wish I had a gorgeous and clean massive apartment like the lady in the video, but all of the snazzy production values aside, I’m having trouble discerning exactly what goes where, so I’ll raise my hand and bluntly ask: is it just a pulsating pink dot to press against whatever you want pulsed?

    Because personally, I need both vaginal and clitoral stimulation so this doesn’t appeal to me even if the quieter, more variable motor does. I wish they had a more blunt “this is how to use it” diagram somewhere. Seems to me that’d help with the whole promotion of normalizing female masturbation thing.

    • http://twitter.com/revelbody Revel Body

      Hi Kimberly – Our first product is an external vibrator and yes, as one of our testers pointed out she likes that the pink part taps her pink parts so nicely! I like your comment about normalizing masturbation discussions – Check out some of our blog articles where we have initiated the conversation. I anticipate further postings covering all manner of discussions and illustrations covering a wide spectrum of sexuality.

      On a side note – that bathroom was awesome!

    • avflox

      Thanks for pointing that out, Kimberly! After how many years of using and writing about sex toys, it’s not hard for me to conclude what something is for without having to look at the manual. I often forget that’s not the case for … well, anyone else.

      The makers of Revel Body state very clearly in the video and elsewhere on their marketing tools that they find most packaging for sex toys to suffer from “pornographic branding,” which they want to move away from. This approach is not new; you’ll see a lot of the more luxury brands are moving away from such graphic imagery as well and putting serious thought into packaging and general design.

      The problem arises when it’s taken too far, though, completely sanitizing the product and in so doing, decontextualizing it to the point where users just don’t know what goes where. Not only that, such an approach also suggests that there is something a little wrong with actually using the product for that — that very dirty thing we can’t even suggest without a bathtub very close by to wash our tongues immediately after doing so!

      I’m sure this isn’t what Revel Body was thinking, but it’s a very good point to bring up to them (and other toy manufacturers) because there is a balance here. Discreet and minimal packaging is elegant for anything, but let’s not go so far that we accidentally undermine the message that pleasure is a good thing.

      • KimberlyChapman

        Yeah, I definitely dig the non-porny packaging. I just wasn’t sure if I was misreading where it went. Simply a phrase like “clitoral stimulator” would be sufficient. :)