Let me ask you something. When was the last time you walked past a branded beauty display and thought, “I feel judged”? Never, right? You felt invited. You might have felt I deserve to be here or I belong here.
Now think about the last time you walked into a sexual wellness brand’s retail space or website. Did it feel the same way?
For some, yes. For most, honestly? No.
Here’s the thing, the mainstream beauty industry has spent decades perfecting the art of making people feel good about wanting something. Sexual wellness brands are still, in many cases, making people feel like they need to justify it. And that gap? That’s where the opportunity is.
And the opportunity right now is enormous. The global sexual wellness market is projected to grow from $0.3 trillion in 2026 to $1.1 trillion by 2036. Sexual wellness is no longer a side note in the wellbeing landscape, it is one of the fastest-growing segments of the global market, expanding more rapidly than traditional cosmetics categories. The brands that position themselves correctly now will be the ones leading that market in a decade.
I’ve spent more than 20 years working with sexual wellness brands and it’s taught me a lot. I believe we have a lot we can learn from beauty. Not because our industries are the same, they clearly aren’t, but because beauty’s skill at selling aspiration, building community that is diverse and inclusive and earning loyalty is something sexual wellness brands could benefit from.
Here’s what I think we should steal (with permission).
1. Normalisation Through Repetition
Beauty brands don’t ask for your permission to exist. They’re on billboards, in supermarkets, on your mum’s bathroom shelf, in every magazine and all over your social feed. They’ve normalised their presence through sheer consistent visibility. Nobody questions whether a lipstick belongs on the high street.
And it’s working for sexual wellness too, slowly. Major pharmacy chains, supermarkets and beauty retailers are actively expanding dedicated sexual wellness shelf space in 2026. Sephora, Target and Ulta have all moved from online-only listings to curated in-store assortments. That shift is happening because the stigma is lifting. But it’s lifting fastest for brands that show up consistently, professionally, and confidently. They’re brands that are saying we belong here, in this space.
The lesson: show up. Keep showing up. Normalisation is a long game and it’s won through repetition.
2. Aspirational Branding Without Shame
Go and look at a Glossier campaign. Or Rare Beauty. Or even The Ordinary, a brand that sells acids and retinoids and somehow made it feel cool and accessible at the same time.
What do they all have in common? They sell a version of you that you want to be. Glowing, confident, in control, a little bit elevated from where you are right now. There’s zero shame in the messaging. Zero.
Sexual wellness brands are catching on. Brands are now adopting professional branding strategies that mirror the aesthetics of premium skincare, packaging that focuses on style and quality rather than shock value. The ones doing it well are winning shelf space that was previously closed to this industry entirely. They’re the companies that are connecting with their customers in an authentic way. If you’re not sure where your brand sits, it’s worth asking whether your marketing is working for you or against you, I explored this in last month’s post.
The lesson: sell the feeling, not just the function. What does your customer feel like after using your product? That’s your campaign.
3. Education as a Marketing Strategy
The skincare industry turned ingredients into a cultural conversation. Hyaluronic acid. Retinol. Niacinamide. Ten years ago, most consumers couldn’t tell you what those were. Now they’re household words because beauty brands invested in education, through content, through dermatologists, through influencers who could break it down in plain language.
Sexual wellness has the same opportunity and it’s bigger. The benefits of self-love, solo pleasure, intimacy, body confidence, connection, and communication with your partner are conversations that can be explored further. Brands investing in educational content realise how powerful it can be to own those conversations. Informed customers buy with confidence. They know what they want and why. And they’re not embarrassed at checkout.
The lesson: educate your customer and they’ll trust you. Trust converts.
4. Influencer Marketing Done Properly
Beauty cracked the influencer code early. Not perfectly, there have been plenty of disasters, but the industry understood that peer recommendation from a trusted voice was worth more than any paid ad. They built ecosystems of creators at every level, from mega-influencers to micro-creators with 10,000 highly engaged followers.
Mainstream culture has done some of the heavy lifting too. As public figures increasingly weave sexual wellness into broader conversations around health and wellbeing, the topic has become more accessible and less taboo. That shift has created opportunities for brands to show up in places that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Influencer marketing is gaining traction in the sexual wellness space, but success depends on choosing the right partners. Authenticity matters. Working with creators who genuinely connect with the category and share a brand’s values is far more effective than partnering with someone who is simply taking a paid opportunity.
The lesson: find your people and support them properly. A creator who genuinely believes in your product is worth ten who are just in it for the fee.
5. Inclusive by Design, Not as an Afterthought
For a long time, beauty got this wrong. Famously, embarrassingly wrong in some cases. But the industry has course-corrected, not perfectly, but genuinely because the market demanded it.
Sexual wellness brands have an opportunity to get this right from the start. The end-user base spans all genders, age groups and relationship types. Women currently represent 70% of the market but that number is shifting as destigmatisation broadens the audience. Inclusive sizing, gender-neutral language where appropriate, imagery that reflects the actual diversity of the people buying your products, this isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a business decision.
The lesson: the customer base for sexual wellness is everyone. Build accordingly.
6. Retail Experience Matters
Walk into a well-designed beauty hall like Liberty or Space NK, into a standalone brand store. The lighting, the testers, the smell, the staff who know what they’re talking about. It’s considered. It’s intentional. It makes you want to spend money.
Retail is the fastest-growing channel in sexual wellness right now, projected at 8.7% CAGR through 2035. The brands winning that race are the ones treating retail as a brand experience, not just a distribution channel. Immediate product availability and tactile brand experience are things online simply cannot replicate.
The lesson: the experience is the product. Design it that way.
I’m not saying sexual wellness should become beauty. Our industry has its own identity, its own complexity and its own very specific challenges that beauty doesn’t face in the same way. Platform restrictions, payment processor discrimination, retailer unease, these are real and they’re frustrating.
But the brands that are going to lead the next decade of this market are the ones who are studying what works in adjacent industries and applying it intelligently. Beauty has done the hard work of normalising self-care as something worth investing in. Sexual wellness is the natural next chapter of that conversation.
Now we need to show up like we believe it.
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