Like many women, Janet Lieberman uses sex toys — and, like many women, she eventually realised most of them totally suck. They’re awkwardly designed, they break after just a few uses, or they just don’t deliver on their promises.

About three years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained mechanical engineer had an epiphany.

“Three things occurred to me,” Lieberman, 31, tells Women’s Health. “First, that I had lower expectations for this product category than I did for other consumer electronics. Second, that there was no reason I shouldn’t be getting the same reliability or value for my money. The third epiphany was that I had the background and experience to be able to make that happen.”

Using the social networking app Meetup, Brooklyn-based Lieberman found a like-minded business partner in Alexandra Fine, who had just graduated from Columbia University with her master’s in clinical psychology. Together, they launched Dame Products. “The idea behind Dame Products was to make toys for sex that would close the pleasure gap, or the notion that four times more women than men say that sex is ‘not at all pleasurable,’” 29-year-old Fine says.

Dame Products’s first offering was the Eva, a hands-free, egg-shaped vibrator that tucks into your labia and anchors itself with two wings, and is meant to be worn during sex. Fine came up with the idea for the Eva before the company was founded.

“I was actually wrapping a silver dollar in various materials and having my friends drop trou and try it out—truly a sophisticated engineering strategy,” she says. “I knew the concept I wanted to make — something that would set in the labia and provide clitoral stimulation during penetrative sex—and I knew that nobody had done it before.”

The female-first design has resonated big time with buyers—according to the New York Times, more than 65,000 of the Eva have been sold. It’s so popular that Dame has had trouble keeping up with the demand, and it’s regularly backordered at sex toy stores.

Fine and Lieberman take feedback seriously, so when they heard some customers craved a more hands-on experience, they listened, and the Fin was born. The Fin is designed to be worn on the tips of your fingers or the base of your palm.

Both the Eva and Fin went through a methodological product development process.

“For Fin, we surveyed about 200 people, asking them what products they’d used, what worked or didn’t work, and what they’d want from a finger vibrator,” Janet says. They then came up with prototypes with a 3D printer and tested them out.

“The last phase of development for both products was iterating with alpha and beta testers—refining the details until we had something we were proud of,” Lieberman says. “It’s a human-centred design approach, which is not widely used in the space because it takes a lot of work, but we believe it results in better products and that your vulva deserves it.” 

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive to their toys. “We take all of the responses we get from users to heart,” says Fine. “We had this one man write us letting us know that after eight years of marriage, Eva led to the first time his wife wanted to have sex two nights in a row. It was such a small anecdote, but it always stuck with me.”

The two say that they’re hoping to reframe the way people view female sexual pleasure with Dame. “All of our products and research will continue our mission of closing the pleasure gap and inserting smart, human-made—mostly lady-made—products into a space that’s ripe for change,” says Fine.

This article originally appeared on Women’s Health

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