When Sarah Jayne and Polly Rodriguez founded Unbound in 2014, the market for women’s sexual wellness was virtually nonexistent, relegated to specialty shops in major cities and therefore inaccessible to most. While Silicon Valley was hesitant to welcome Unbound at first, thousands of enthusiastic customers proved the need for such a company.
Unbound began as a subscription box company, sending sex toys and related wellness products in a monthly package. The site soon expanded into the ecommerce realm when, co-founder Rodriguez said, “We saw a massive opportunity to vertically integrate and go to market with our own line of products, cutting out distributors and middlemen.”
As a result, Unbound managed to avoid the subscription box bust and evolve into a distinct, consumer-facing brand. “This direct-to-consumer model allowed us to offer better quality products at a more affordable price to our female consumer,” Rodriguez said. “Almost everything you see on Unbound's website today is made in-house.”
Almost everything you see on Unbound's website today is made in-house.”
Shoppers can expect to find Unbound stocked with a range of colorful sex toys, condoms and lubricants. Unbound also sells a range of delicate jewelry, tote bags and other accessories. The entire website has a bright, friendly and body-positive aesthetic that would appeal to someone who, say, reads Refinery29. Needless to say, it’s quite unlike any of its competitors.
Unbound’s journey to finding its niche was not an easy one, however, beginning with the inception of the company. “For me personally, a cancer diagnosis in 2008 resulted in menopause at 21. I found myself in a seedy shop on the side of the highway trying to buy lube and feeling pretty awful about the whole experience,” Rodriguez said. “[Co-founder Jayne and I] both had experiences shopping in the sexual wellness category and felt like there should be a better online experience for those who are buying a vibrator for the first time.”
Despite the clear vision for the company, traditional sources of funding remained out of reach.
“Our category made fundraising virtually impossible,” said Rodriguez “In fact, we bootstrapped for the first three years.” This challenge proved to pay off, however: “[By then] we had aggregated a wealth of data and knowledge that no one else in the industry had,” Rodriguez explained.
Many female founders have moved to New York to work on their sexual health and wellness companies.”
These insights lead Unbound to a $2.7 million fundraising round in December of 2017. In press accompanying the funding, Rodriguez expressed the company’s intentions to continue moving away from third-party products, and to eventually expand into brick and mortar locations. “Rodriguez envisions Unbound becoming something like Planned Parenthood 2.0, where people can get mammograms, pap smears and more,” said a Techcrunch report.
Such goals are supplemented by Rodriguez’s own activism; she helped co-found an organization called The Women of SexTech, which helps empower other women working in this evolving space. “The female founder network in NYC is hard to beat,” Rodriguez said. “Many female founders have moved to New York to work on their sexual health and wellness companies as a result.”
In many ways, Unbound represents the next generation of ecommerce companies. Combining a product with related content and a relevant social message, Unbound is testing the limits of how a traditional tech product can create a community.
