When the pandemic hit, our daily lives were impacted dramatically. Everything from family, social lives, love lives, shopping patterns, and even the way we kept up with our physical fitness changed. Some companies suffered due to a failure to pivot in this new world, while others took this as a challenge for growth. Ella Paradis, leading sexual health & wellness retailer, used the pandemic as an opportunity for growth by taking continuous inventory of their customers. This wasn’t just analyzing sales data, but surveying how they were being impacted mentally, physically, and well…sexually.

In the case of Ella Paradis, surveying their customers led to discovering how loneliness and boredom were causing feelings of depression and low self-esteem. They decided to drill down even deeper to see how specific subsets of customers were feeling; this involved splitting the customers into 4 groups: singles with no sexual partners, committed partners just diving into serious relationships, long term couples (think married for 15 years with a few kids), and retiree couples.

Once they were able to better understand how the pandemic affected each of these sets sexually, they were able to create a unique assortment of products to target specific problems and issues related to their sex lives. In the case of a single person without a sexual partner, the problem to target was loneliness. For married couples, bedroom boredom became the buzzword. The products to solve these issues came as no brainers to the team at Ella Paradis.

A major product development for the company was the launch of a unique stimulator called the Tap Dancer, which utilizes patent pending TapPleasure technology, mimicking the same human touch a vulva owner experiences during foreplay. Not only did this employ brand new technology, it was technology based on solving a current issue at hand: missing the touch of a lover.

Going back to the case of boredom in married couples due to the mundane day-to-day activities of seeing each other 24/7 while working from home, with the kids doing virtual school, and the ever so distant thought of a date night, Ella Paradis created cheeky bundles like the “Beat Bedroom Boredom” bundle. Because it was marketed directly to this subset, it was easy for them to find and understand what the purpose of the item was.

Seeing the fruits of their labor, large scale content publishers saw a mutually beneficial partnership as their readers were experiencing the same issues. From this, Ella Paradis’ brand recognition skyrocketed, with searches for the brand increasing 200% from April to December 2020.

Both the Tap Dancer and Beat Bedroom Bundle brought major success to the company, however this was no coincidence. Because these items were created from relevant issues their customers were facing in real-time, the success was massive: a 130% increase in orders and a 104% increase in sales revenue, even receiving global recognition as an Inc 500/5000 Award Winner.

So, while we may never experience another global pandemic to change society as a whole again in our lifetime, remaining agile as a company still presents itself as a driving force for growth. And, if there’s one major takeaway from the Ella Paradis case, it’s the importance of constant communication with your customers.