It's Normal brings fresh vibes to sexuality

From management consultant to sex tech start-up founder, Lucy Wark shares her story.

Sex Tech<5 mins
Lucy Wark talk about Normal and Sexuality

Can you tell us about you and how you came to create NORMAL?

Sure! I started off my career in management consulting at a firm called McKinsey, and my background before that was in social science and business (always been a big nerd on how economics and culture work!). After leaving McKinsey, I found myself gravitating to work in the startup space, especially around mission-driven healthcare companies – and over time, was becoming more and more passionate about how consumer experiences in the sexuality space seemed to lag the great experiences we were seeing rolled out in so many other areas. It felt like shopping for sexual wellness products and educating yourself about sex was still steeped in stigma, and it didn’t need to be – so we created NORMAL to step into that space with a totally relaxed, approachable, normalising experience that people actually enjoy.

Was it challenging to move from corporate into sex tech startup?

Strangely enough, I’ve found having a pretty rigorous business training to be really helpful – it lets you bring fresh eyes to many of the old assumptions about how this space works! It was definitely an unexpected LinkedIn update for a few people in my network though, and I’m not sure if I’ll be asked back to talk about my career for a few years at least!

What’s been the most exciting thing about moving into this space?

Honestly, waking up every day and getting to work on something that feels like a passion, not a job. I’ve got an amazing team around me as well, and their creativity is super inspiring as well! And then reading customer feedback is the actual greatest thing, it’s a place where you can make quite a profound impact for someone, and that’s a real privilege.

Why is it so important to normalise conversations around sexual pleasure?

Feeling insecure about sexuality can erode relationships and self-esteem, and feeling excited and confident is such a big contributor to our holistic wellbeing. I think for a lot of people, we don’t really believe we need to be ashamed about sex anymore – but not many of us are given the language and modelling of how to have conversations which reflect that. So being able to have those conversations and invite people in is a great way to normalise it.

What makes NORMAL special?

We’re about making sexual wellness truly stigma-free, stress-free and regret-free. So if you’re buying a toy from us, it’s a curated range of modern designs, with a personalised recommendation quiz, how-to videos from the wonderful sex coach Georgia Grace about every toy, a free digital sex education library available to all, and our 100 Night Stand return policy (where you can return a toy for a full refund, no weird T&Cs, within 100 nights). We also put a lot of emphasis on sustainability (with our packaging and our sex toy recycling program) and inclusivity (so you’ll notice that our language never assumes someone is heterosexual, cisgendered, monogamous or single-partnered – we talk about the anatomy and let you do the rest!).

 

NORMAL has a special 25% discount for you.  Enter GOODBITS25 at check out and enjoy the fresh stigma-free vibes.