When Becuming launched last year, it was a subscription service mailing out bundle boxes of products such as dildos, lube, handcuffs, butt plugs and sexy literature to its subscribers.
Founder Caroline Moreau-Hammond says she learned a lot about her customers’ pleasure preferences via a quiz that helps them select products. “We found that people are curious about anal sex, squirting or kinks, but they don’t necessarily have that much experience with it,” she says. “And if you don’t feel like you know what you’re doing, that’s okay.”
Becuming has now evolved its offering into an online sex store and content platform that helps guide you towards products, how-to guides, pornography and podcasts. It still offers a quiz to kick off a conversation about what toys you might be curious about, and its sex guides, written with Melbourne sexologist Kassandra Mourikis, are among their best sellers.
“Our best seller is a dildo called Bouncer from a German brand called Fun Factory,” says Moreau-Hammond. “It’s a silicone dildo with three weighted balls up the centre of it and it has a suction base … Second to that is our guide to anal play and sex, which is a $20 online guide. Off the back of that people have bought anal products with us too.”
Becuming also sells a range of mood-setting items such as scented candles, games, massage oils and incense, and with every order customers receive a QR code to access three months of free ethical porn from Lust Cinema.
“It’s through a partnership with Erika Lust, a Swedish pornographer who is seen as the figurehead of the ethical porn movement,” explains Moreau-Hammond. “It’s beautifully shot, there’s a narrative component to it for people who like that, and more than anything it’s a company we felt really comfortable working with and supporting.”
Moreau-Hammond takes her business very seriously. She’s personally tested every product and guide available on her site, operating out of her home in Brunswick East, Melbourne (“The backroom is full of all my dildos,” she says), as well as at a co-working space in Collingwood.
“There’s nothing we sell that I haven’t personally engaged with,” she says. “My two goals for Becuming have always been to reduce the harmful practices of the sex toy industry by focusing on brands that are doing good things – for example, brands making their own silicone – and to focus on the design of the site and how people actually find products. A huge complaint that people have with the sex toy industry is a paradox of choice – 50 different products that do the same thing – so we’ve thought carefully about how the site directs people towards products.”
Becuming has strict criteria for the brands it stocks. The founder opts for locally made brands, such as Melbourne-made lubricant Figr – as well as some international brands, such as the US-based Le Wand – which have proven records of their factory practices, how products are tested, their ingredients and whether or not the product is tested on animals.
“Sex has always been something I’ve been interested in, but what I observed was a lack of innovation in how sex products are sold and how we talk about them, alongside the opacity of the manufacturing of sex toys – how they’re made, where they come from and their impact,” she explains.
In addition to the products people can research and buy as they choose, Becuming offers a pared-back version of its Bundle boxes – including ones for kink, butt stuff and solo vibes.
“We noticed we’d get people who spent hours researching, reading all the reviews they can about a product before making a choice, versus those who are happy to trust what someone is going to serve them. They don’t want to have to make a decision, and I’m like that too.”
Becuming ships Australia-wide.
