“Pioneer of Tech-enabled Personalized Pleasure”

Marita Sæterli Kihle has transformed Sweet Tech—a sex-tech start-up that combines innovative hardware with customizable digital connectivity to create a complete and fulfilling physical experience—by focusing on a solid commitment to diversity, leading to a diverse company where women and minorities feature prominently, bringing new marketing perspectives. These perspectives and ethical guidelines of marketing should positively impact an industry where unprofessional actors abound.

“The Handy is an upscale automatic stroker designed and developed by SweetTech AS, a Norwegian company that has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway. Founded in 2017 by cybernetics engineer Alexander Bjorkmann, Economist Jens Petter Wilhelmsen and investor Nicolay Bang, the Handy is built with innovative design and high quality at its core.”

As per Marita, “marketing is hugely corrupted by black hat marketing techniques, aiming to adapt sales pitches to sell products to everyone rather than finding the right people who want and need your product. An ethical approach to this is focusing on a long-term game, building data and feedback to better tailor the targeting to the right people, rather than tailoring the methods to trick people into wanting your product.”

Marita is inspiring and empowering women entrepreneurs across industries by actively advocating for the importance of including people from different walks of life in developing a product aimed primarily at men. Marita inspires others to speak up with confidence in an industry that could easily be seen as an unwelcome environment for women. “Challenging biased ways of thinking is a hugely important part of leading the way for aspiring the women entrepreneurs of tomorrow.” Armed with such a unique ideology, Marita has been taking the company to new heights.

Sweet Tech was born due to a need in the market – both to create high-tech sex toys that work and a need to focus on pleasure for everyone, opening the doors to a more inclusive industry. “The porn and sex tech industry has been in need of innovation for a long time, and consumer products are becoming smart based on the aim to simplify peoples lives,” she says. “We saw the need for this same innovation to take place in the sex tech industry as well, and us being new to the industry allowed us to create a product with a fresh mind and perspective.”

The company has an open API that allows content providers and software companies to create features and assets for the Handy, and it is designed with this in mind. “We would rather open the doors for creative partnerships with other industry players, allowing us to create even better technology, and making sure that we all benefit from cooperating with each other. We believe that this brings a lot of value to us as a company, but even more it will benefit the end user,” explains Marita. “We mainly focus all our marketing efforts on digital strategies, and we have built a huge online community of loyal users who participate in daily conversations with our team to provide both feedback on what we are developing, but also sharing ideas and wishes for what we focus on next.”

According to Marita, when content providers integrate Handy into their website, they make their site interactive. “Watching a video is one thing, but integrating Handy means that you can feel what is actually happening on screen. This allows the users to feel more engaged with the content, and provides that extra element of interaction.”

Sweet Tech’s most significant achievement has been to create such an engaging online community that daily discusses subject matters that might be taboo in other forums. They know that many people struggle to talk about masturbation and sex toy use daily with friends and family. “We have opened up an arena where this is completely safe to do, and we see the users share tips and tricks with each other, as well as offering solutions to issues that might appear along the way,” adds Marita. “It has become a real community of supporting players all offering a helping hand to give the best experiences possible.”

Sweet Tech is continuously expanding its product portfolio based on the customer's wishes. That means creating a new line of sleeves, a handsfree mount, and a vulva-oriented product that will be designed to sync with the Handy or to be used on its own. IEWL