Fused - Archive

Ooshka bring fine style, design and fun into the often cheapo tacky market of the sex toy. Founder of the Ann Summers for the E generation Paul von Bergen tells us the unfinished story of O…

Ooshka was born five years ago, on a yacht party in Ibiza, whilst putting on parties for the likes of Durex (who were kindly agreeable to getting closer to youth culture and were prepared to invest well in it). People were saying how refreshing it was to see something sexual, promoted in a different, more positive and fun way. This got me thinking - maybe I could apply myself to something actually really good, like sex, rather than to beer, fag and condom companies that I seemed to be applying myself to a lot lately.

I had recently met Ange whilst on holiday in Australia. We had quite an 'open-minded' sexual relationship from the start - it was amazing. One sexually open minded funny girl plus one sexually open minded boy from Birmingham makes for brilliant times. Ange and I talked about getting out of London, where we were living in my apartment by the river in Battersea. I had been working in London for about 10 years, living in various places and doing various things, working during the week and boozing, smoking and doing drugs with my mates at the weekend.

I got every single pound I could from my marketing company profits, investment property and (beloved) Beemer convertible, and decided to launch the new vision with Ange. This seemed like a good time to emigrate as well. I decided that I was going to be content with nothing less that a super-cool, super-successful and of course super-profitable global sex empire.
I flew over to Sydney a few times, and fell in love with this wicked four storey detached building, 2.2 minutes from the main city centre and 3.4 minutes from the cool bars, clubs and independent shops of Paddington. Perfect. I decided that the one floor would be the party room and photo-studio. This was where the fun was going to happen. Below that the showroom and below that the reception and stock areas. It was going to be wicked. The perfect HQ for my vision of Ooshka.

Whilst the building work was going on in Sydney, I was running around the world trying to suss out what to sell. I had started looking around on the web a while back and I literally bought thousands of the nicest looking sexual products I could. The problem was, they looked even worse in real life than they did on the tacky website, there was no way I was going to sell this tat. It looked horrible.

There was only one thing for it - I would have to design and produce my complete own range. It can't be that hard I thought, I've got 12 weeks before I'm planning to launch in Sydney. Finding designers wasn't that easy so I set to work thinking about what to sell.

I didn't have any preconceived ideas about what I should sell, other than it should be designed nicely to make sex more fun, varied and talked about. I thought about sex and what it could be and decided for Ooshka on a full 'lifestyle' range. I included shagpile rugs, smellies, massage products, sex toys, lingerie, underwear, t-shirts, art, bondage stuff and a shed load more. I didn't think I was trying to do too much.

I decided that the only way to keep prices down was to make in bulk in Asia. That is what all the big companies do - that is what I will do. I loved Thailand, and had been there on hols so decided Bangkok was going to be the production base of Ooshka global.

Arriving at Bangkok airport with a suitcase full of sexual goody prototypes is an interesting experience. I didn't even know at the time that selling sex toys is illegal in Thailand. That was the easy bit, the next job was to find companies to make leather products, underwear, jewellery, sex toys, home furnishings, massage goods and smelly products. It was going to be a busy 48-hour trip.

I had arranged meetings by email with various 'companies', although I could not be sure for the communication was problematic. I was armed with faxed maps, a taxi driver and a case full of pleasure.

Three companies were chosen, briefs were issued, prototypes left and in a few weeks, when they sent me some production samples, I would be transferring £40,000 to them and sitting back to wait for my new range to arrive.

To see what he designed go to www.ooshka.com