K&T had the pleasure of interviewing Lora DiCarlo. Her company shares her name. It is a women-owned business that is sex-positive. She is a good role model of not giving in when the world around you is sending you mixed messages.
History of her company and how she started
She was 28 when she had her first blended orgasm. Her blended orgasm was a stimulation of the glans clitoris and the urethral sponge at the same time. It was an insane full-body orgasm as she stated. Her first thought was how do I create that again. At the time, she was a pre-med at Portland University to become an Orthopedic Surgeon. However, the blended orgasm experience became her primary focus. At the time, she was acutely aware she wanted to learn two things. One was understanding physiologically what had happened. Two was finding a product on the market, at the time; to assist her in reliving the experience.
Lora learned the product didn’t exist. the medical knowledge was limited at best. She was disappointed to learn the lack of information concerning the vulva and vaginal orgasm. Referring to anatomy textbooks at the time, it’s literally just all about him and all the stuff that goes on in the penis such as the blood flow and what happens with erections. Yet for females, all I could find in the textbooks were just some examples of cysts and pregnancy.
Lora Dicarlo shared with us, I come from a family of engineers and so I have a propensity for design. I started making designs on napkins. Every chance I got; I talked to people about it. When one of my first investors said it sounds like you have an invention here. I downplayed what they said to me because I never thought of myself as an inventor. I am just a nurse. What do I know about inventing things?
Couldn’t give up
I couldn’t let it go even though I wasn’t sure how to go about doing this. Within 6 months of that initial conversation, I had a business plan. In October 2017, I had my first seed money to get the company started.
The prototype design of the first product was done by engineering interns at Oregon State University. It was designed within 9 months. They filed for 5 patents. To get it to market, they decided to apply for the awards. So that they would have awards that they could add to their product once it hit the market. So they went and applied to the consumer electronics show in their honoree invention awards. We actually got it in robotics. When we started we were a team of 6 engineers, who were fem facing trans queer team. We initially thought we would be overlooked based on our team’s sexuality.
We got the award to our surprise, but the celebration was short-lived because they took our award back a month later. When they took away the award at the same time they decided to put down the product saying it was obscene, profane, immoral, pornographic, and gender-biased.
It was easy for us to immediately decided to hold them to our values as a company. Giving in wasn’t an option, we view female sexuality as sacred. Our approach to the situation was maintaining our values of empowerment and integrity. We created a strategy of disruption while we were simultaneously living by our values of inclusion.
After the news went viral, The award was given back to us. CES realized the negative publicity was not what they needed at the time.
K&T asked, how did you come up with the name Ose’? I am Sicilian so the name is Italian and it means to dare. We asked were there any funny stories since Ose’ came on the market. Lora shared with us, one funny story; was a man bought Ose’ and complained that it didn’t work for him. She explained to him it wasn’t designed for the penis. It was designed for the vulva and vagina.
Currently Lora Dicarlo
Her site has launched Wellsx Coaching to help educate consumers about what their products do. We offer a safe space to have an open discussion on how to use our products as well as any other sexual topic. We support sexual health.
Her company has seen an uptick in sales due to the pandemic. Lora DiCarlo believes that Covid will help change drastically how we are intimate with one another, and how we approach our relationships. We will be more inclusive!
Lora DiCarlo has several new products i.e sex toys on the market since the Ose’ and more are in development.
K&T is grateful that Lora took the time out of her busy schedule to talk with us. K&T believes Lora is an innovator and more importantly, she supports women and women’s sexuality. She has learned that she is more than just a nurse. She is a pioneer for all things sex tech.
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