077: Sex Toy Entrepreneur, Reveals his Mr. Sloan… (Brian Sloan of VIECI)

Background on Brian Sloan of VIECI:

Brian Sloan, CEO of Very Intelligent Ecommerce Inc. Brian quit his job as a lawyer to start a sex toy business that generates over $6 million a year, and he did it without office space or full-time employees.

He and his collaborators at Very Intelligent E-Commerce, Inc. have skipped the usual distribution methods, focusing solely on internet sales. The company's most recent product, a sex toy for men (NSFW), launched as an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. It turned heads and raised over $260,000 — far more than its $45,000 goal— in the process.

“We are sure that we'll at least double revenue within the first year … and will try our hand at offline sales to resellers,” Sloan told us.

He was kind enough to answer our questions about what it's like to steer the ship of an adult novelty company. Here are some key takeaways from our conversation and the full (lightly edited) transcript appears below that.

Sloan started as a lawyer, but made a change early in his career that led him to where he is now. “I used to go to garage sales at 6 AM on the weekends and make as much or more money than I was making in the firm. At that point it really became clear that if what I wanted was more money and a fun lifestyle — working as a lawyer would offer a poor return on my time investment.”

Brian Sloan hit the motherlode when one of his products turned into a viral phenomenon. Autoblow 2 achieved international popularity, raking in more than a quarter million dollars via crowdfunding. In the meantime, Brian has added several other toys to his range, and his latest innovation, called 3Fap, is already on its way. We were curious to learn more about this product and about other new ideas that are already in the works, but, of course, we also squeezed in a few questions about the general developments in the erotic market.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[1:09] Brian invents, manufacture and sell sex toys.
[1:53] “I didn’t know I’d become a sex toy inventor really until I think I started doing it…”
[2:10] Halfway through Law School, Brian realized that he wanted to do something else that involves buying and selling.
[3:07] Brian started importing latex fetish wear from China because of the low competition and high demand.
[3:50] “I started to sell sex toys only because I started to understand the sex toys world online…”
[7:13] Brian’s friend from Law School told him about an antique market in China so Brian decided to go.
[9:27] The products that Brian made were like latex catsuits.
[11:48] Brian’s website that was created in China failed so he found freelancers from Romania to help him.
[16:59] “I was chasing different product niches, in the end it wasn’t such a good idea”
[19:08] In 2008, Brian launched his website and in 2011 the business sold a million dollars a year.
[20:06] A factory from Taiwan offered to help Brian improve his product but his concern was it was not a sex toy factory.
[21:35] Brian wasted a year and half working with the factory from Taiwan.
[22:00] In 2013, he met people in a Las Vegas sex toy show who finally developed the product (Autoblow 2) that he launched in Indiegogo.
[29:08] “This is actually really important for me to the whole entrepreneurial process, the ability to just change my location, inspired me I think to do what I did there”
[34:23] After living in Beijing, China for so long, Brian decided to leave because of too much pollution.
[37:51] Nowadays, Brian doesn’t need to visit factories often anymore and does business over the phone and online.
[38:28] Brian’s company size now is $67 million.
[41:56] The company has different warehouses in Australia, Europe and the US.
[45:38] 70% of the business is related to the Autoblow product.
[47:33] “The Amazon system is very unfair…”
[49:41] The internet marketing that worked for Brian was he learned how to turn his products into news.
[53:35] One of the best thing that ever happened to Brian was failing the bar exam.
[54:28] “Because I didn’t have a back-up and because I went into it (being an entrepreneur) knowing that I didn’t have a back-up, I think it made me a lot stronger throughout the whole process”

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? Atlas Shrugged By Ayn Rand.
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Leica Q.
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? We use Magento for eCommerce but all other systems we built, i don't like to be attached to a SaaS model milking me for money for years.
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Nothing is keeping us from growing, but we have a huge challenge in developing autoblow 3 and that product is what will take us from 6-7 to 10-15m.