The company has certainly done a great job of grabbing attention and turning headlines into marketing opportunities.
The past few months have seen the company in the news after its bank and then its insurance company rejected it as a client.
Speaking to Money Talks, Conway and her business partner, Jo Cummins, are refreshingly honest about grabbing those opportunities.
“With that, we thought, ‘Here we go. Let’s go!’,” says Cummins.
“I think everyone always loves an underdog, especially in New Zealand. And like there’s always chatter about banks in the news, about profits. So it was the perfect storm that we got this press and this news coverage.”
In the end, both the bank and insurance issues were resolved. BNZ changed its attitude completely, and BNZ chief executive Dan Huggins even agreed to be in some social media content.
But ultimately, the publicity is as much about the mission to get sexual wellbeing accepted as a positive normal part of life as it is to get free marketing, they say.
“Much like your money topic is taboo, so are things like sexual wellness,” Conway says.
“So we are really passionate about taking away some of those taboos with using humour and so on.”
The pair both had their own small businesses – Conway in social media marketing and Cummins with a gourmet business – but started talking remotely during lockdown about new ventures.
They realised there was a big gap in the market.
“You had seedy sex shops and that was it,” Cummins says.
“And even if you went online, you got targeted with porn ads or whatever. It was just, everything was a gross experience to do with sex products. It just added to the stigma and added to the yuck about it.”
“It was the only female product on the market that we could think of at the time that it was not a nice buying experience.
“I think we expected to still be going with our existing businesses for about a year.”
But once Girls Get Off (GGO) launched, the business took off.
“Joe and I both sold our businesses at that time and went all in on GGO,” Conway says.
They say they now have a loyal following in New Zealand and are expanding rapidly in Australia.
“In some ways it’s good to be in a bigger market,” Conway says.
“You can see what’s possible. There’s a lot more money flowing around and that’s really good. But on the flipside, in New Zealand, for something to travel via word of mouth, there are actually less connection points that you need.”
Girls Get Off is also starting to take off in the US with about 10% of its sales now in that market.
They say tariffs haven’t been an issue – even though sex toys definitely aren’t getting any exemptions.
“We were going to get hit by tariffs, it’s all on hold, no,” says Cummins says.
“We didn’t do shipping to the states for about 30 days until it came down to 30% or whatever. I haven’t seen the latest. But now we’ve just changed it over to say ‘duties paid by customer’ and if they wanna buy it, they can buy it.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from the Girls Get Off duo on creating their brand.
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics - it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
