WOW Tech is the sex-toy company trying to make the earth move: ‘You don’t have to be ashamed’

Johannes Plettenberg tells Andy Martin about his career arc from wine to investment banking, to sex toys

The Womanizer sex toy uses a column of air to 'push and pull' (WOW tech)

He could have gone into the family wine business. His great-grandfather started the vineyard in the Nahe Valley in Germany and his father is still producing wine. But Johannes Plettenberg went into sex tech instead. “It’s more interesting and exciting than wine,” he says. “Wine is limited by the amount of land you own. WOW Tech is bigger than any vineyard.”

Plettenberg studied engineering and business studies in Berlin and at the University of Montana, where “my second semester was more about snowboarding”. He paid his dues in investment banking in London, then went to work for Bombardier transport group in Canada and India. But he was “a little bit bored”, so he joined sex toys start-up, Amorelie, in 2015. “You don’t have to be ashamed when you buy sex toys,” he says.

The real breakthrough occurred when Michael Lenke came to them with his “Womanizer” sex toy. Plettenberg admits “It’s not ideal in English.” But vocabulary aside, it works. Lenke is an eccentric inventor, along the lines of “Doc” in Back to the Future. He already had many original creations to his name. He devised an earthquake early warning system. And a device that encourages roses to bloom early, inspired by watching a dandelion blossom between the paving stones on his back-garden terrace.

Then one day he saw a headline saying over 50 per cent of women are dissatisfied with their sex lives. Heterosexual women have the biggest problem. According to a 2017 study, 35 per cent of this group don’t achieve orgasm during sex. Lenke brought the Womanizer to Amorelie in 2015, saying “I’m 65 and I’m too old to do this on my own.” The Womanizer works in a way not dissimilar to the machine that gets roses to bloom early. It speeds up the whole process. It doesn’t just warn about the earth moving – it makes it happen. Its selling point is that unlike the typical sex toy it does not involve contact but produces a column of air that, as Plettenberg explains, “pushes and pulls”.  

But Amorelie was being sold to a German media company and they didn’t want to do the Womanizer. Plettenberg was crushed. His wife said to him, “Why don’t you buy it yourself?” So he did. It took him a year to get the financing together and open an office in Berlin in 2017. WOW Tech was formed in 2018 when they also bought the “We-Vibe”, which enables couples to orgasm simultaneously. Now, in September 2020, they are bringing out a new product, the Arcwave Ion, dedicated to men going solo. “We have the best female product,” says Plettenberg. “We have the best couples product. And now we have the best male product too.”

Facebook allows you to be racist, to be anti-semitic, you can stigmatise bodily imperfections, but you can’t talk about sexual satisfaction

Plettenberg admits that male masturbation has an image problem. But he is proud of the Arcwave Ion. “It’s the first product we’ve developed completely from scratch,” he says. When they started doing research on the male anatomy, they soon realised that men and women are not so different. Says Plettenberg, “Male genitalia are much closer to female genitalia than you might think. Both are filled with receptors.”

Admittedly men tend to achieve orgasm more readily than women. “We were not trying to close the orgasm gap,” says Plettenberg. “We wanted to create a new way to orgasm.” He says that they are trying “to get men to feel what women feel”. Their basic insight was to take the existing Womanizer “pleasure air” technology and apply it to the male anatomy instead. “Men are not missing out any more.”

They had a focus group of 17,000 men around the world who were dedicated to product testing. Of the 17,000 panel, 100 tested it. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive: “I’ve never felt anything like this before,” said one.

Johanna Rief, head of sexual empowerment (WOW Tech)

Plettenberg says that at WOW Tech they like to think that “sex toys belong right in the centre of society”. He concedes that if you go and get a reality check at a small town in Germany, you realise that “it’s a long process. But we are at the forefront of that process.”

One of the difficulties WOW Tech have run into is in the realm of marketing. Online platforms, like Google, Twitter and Facebook are prudish about anything to do with sex products. Plettenberg says that this is “American hypocrisy: Facebook allows you to be racist, to be anti-semitic, you can stigmatise bodily imperfections, but you can’t talk about sexual satisfaction”. WOW Tech said Instagram shut their account. “Women can be objectified, but we are not allowed to show our products. It’s forbidden.”

Plettenberg draws attention to the irony that, on the one hand, “there is a humongous porn industry”, but they, on the other hand, “cannot show a naked nipple”. You can still find WOW Tech online through their partner networks, like Lovehoney in the UK. They can sell on Amazon even if they can’t advertise. There is a dedicated Arcwave video for “sophisticated non-conformists” here at arcwave.com.

I had the opportunity to speak not only to Johannes Plettenberg, but to Johanna Rief who has the unbeatable job title of “Head of Sexual Empowerment” at WOW Tech. She is the woman behind “International Equal Masturbation Day”. She points out that there is a “masturbation gap”: whereas men masturbate on average 154 times a year (British men score as high as 214) the figure for women is 51 times per annum. The gap is 68 per cent. “Of course, nobody has to or should masturbate if he or she does not want to,” says Rief. “But masturbation is an important part of sexual self-determination. Unfortunately, shame, social stigma and lack of education prevent many women from exploring their own sexuality.” Equal Masturbation Day was dreamt up to remind women that it is up to them to close the gap. This year it was held on 5 September because statistically, taking the year as a whole, women would not have achieved autonomous orgasm until that day in 2020. Rief says, “We hope that in 2021 it will take place in July or August”.

I have a feeling that the Rolling Stones are going to have to rewrite their old classic, “I can’t get no satisfaction” – because now they (and Spice Girls likewise) can, any time.