When our friends and sponsors over at LELO teased on social media late last week about their next big thing — the best advance in condom design since the reservoir tip — people were split:
Is the new LELO condom an elaborate April Fool’s hoax or a genuine innovative product?
LELO is no stranger to pulling pranks around April Fool’s Day. Do you remember their hilarious GASM and DEXTRUS ‘product’ launches? But are peoples’ perceptions of condoms so “meh” that they really couldn’t believe a condom upgrade could be genuine?
Here’s the truth: LELO HEX is coming this summer, 2016 — for real. No joke.
It has been close to 70 years since the invention of the latex condom, followed by lubrication and the addition of the reservoir tip shortly thereafter. Since then, innovation appears to have stalled; beyond superficial additions like ribs, dots and flavors, or alternative materials like polyisoprene or polyurethane for the latex intolerant, the actual design of the condom remains as it was all those years ago.
“Customers simply don’t believe a better condom is possible now,” says Steve Thomson, Chief Marketing Officer at LELO, “and that has terrible consequences in terms of reduced usage rates among young adults, which clearly have an impact on the spread of STIs.”
During the development of HEX, LELO surveyed 10,000 customers and found:
- 71% of people do not like to use condoms
- 86% of people have not changed their preferred brand of condoms in the past year
If people don’t like to wear condoms, why don’t they try something new?!
Because there’s nothing genuinely new on the market. LELO interviewed several experts, all of whom agreed that in order to convince more people to wear condoms, a legit update to the current design is required:
“There are countless innovations in the world of sexual pleasure, sex education, and sexual health, but the condom has remained basically the same . . . . We’ve had something that works reasonably well enough, so brands weren’t pushing to completely reinvent it, just improve on the existing models. [But] for many people who do have easy access to condoms, a major reason for not using condoms, or not using them consistently, is the fact they don’t like them.”
— Dr. Zhana Vrangalova, PhD, a sex researcher, writer and professor at NYU in Human Sexuality
“I am not sure if [condoms] had smart enough design for the generation that is used to the slick design of smart phones, however knowing LELO and its innovative designers, I am hopeful.”
— Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh, Chair of the Communication Committee at American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT)
“Our society and business culture does not encourage people to innovate and disrupt in the area of sex. Society and business throw up huge obstacles for anyone trying to innovate…The major global condom manufacturers go to great lengths to ensure a virtual monopoly.”
— Cindy Gallop, respected feminist activist
Ingenuity is where HEX comes in. Based on their past, high quality innovations in pleasure, we’re confident LELO is going to change the way the world looks at great safer sex by changing the condom — finally! — for the better.
