Girl Talk

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What started as a casual socially distanced pink gin on the driveway between friends back in
New Zealand’s level 4 lockdown has quickly turned into a booming online business — despite
offering just one little product.

Small, discreet, candy pink and really kind of cute, the Missy Mini vibrator has been selling like hotcakes, and receiving rave reviews just as quickly. “World masturnation!” laughs co-founder
Viv Conway when asked about the plan for Girls Get Off, the business she launched in March
with friend Jo Cummins.

While the popularity of the Missy Mini doesn’t surprise them — it’s been both carefully researched and thoroughly tested [more laughter ensues] — it’s the groundswell of engagement, support and deeply personal feedback they’ve received that has. “We knew it was a really fast growing industry,” says Jo, “and as soon as we started talking about it, it became pretty clear that there was a really
big gap in the market for something non-seedy. There was nothing well-branded to females that took a wellness approach.”

Product testing and lots of market research followed. “It was about finding something we could apply our whole concept around, making it less intimidating and more entertaining. We had a few really good nights with wine and lots of Googling, which was pretty funny.”

The entrepreneurial pair, who have been friends “for years”, also have other successful businesses on the
go — Viv is one half of social media agency Ace The Gram, while mum-of-two Jo founded personalised cookie company Hello & Cookie
— but have long been keen to take on a project together. “I think when I have a business idea, the
first person that goes into my mind is Viv,” says Jo. “We just work well together, our brains just kind
of align. She gets me!”

“I just think Jo’s smart, Jo’s just got all the good ideas,” adds Viv, who admits they’ve had “plenty”
of ideas before that they haven’t acted on. “Working together has been on the cards for a while,
and we’ve got to the stage of fully concepting other businesses, but it just hasn’t been the right fit
or the right time. Girls Get Off has just allowed us to pull everything we know from our other businesses into one.”

“We didn’t leave a stone unturned in our planning,” says Jo. “From the very start we thought
about the product and the pricing but also what the customer journey was — how it was going to make someone feel when they landed on our Instagram page, which is, it’s funny, it’s fun, it feels
safe, like they’ve got a platform. And then planning all the way through to receiving the product
— it’s affordable but it has a really luxurious feel. We also send out earplugs for your flatmates,
which keeps it fun and aligns with our mission of starting a conversation, so everything has been really carefully thought out.”

Having ensured it also “ticked all the boxes in terms of being recession proof and lockdown
proof”, the daring duo — Viv a born-and-bred Tauranga local and Jo an Aussie import who has
lived in the region for 11 years — hit go on GGO on March 12 to discover they had an instant winner
on their hands.

“We’ve been overwhelmed really, by the support,” says Viv. “I think with any business you’re always really unsure — you can do as much planning as you want, but it’s not until you market and sell it
that you know whether people are actually prepared to pay for what you’ve created.

“So we’ve been really blown away by the sales side, but then on top of that, how much need there is — and how hungry people are — for education and to break the taboo around female self pleasure.

“As Jo mentioned, with all these seedy sex shops, there’s no real place for people to come together and there’s no brands that are ‘for the gals’, you know. We’ve been able to establish quite a lot of
trust through our Instagram quite early on, which has been demonstrated by people sharing with
us their ‘Sunday night confessions’ or tips for what gets them off, which is not something we expected at this early stage. I think it shows just how much people needed something like this.”

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First published in issue 34 (June/July 2021) of Our Place magazine.

‍Story by Josie Steenhart
Photography by Tastefully Studios

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