Laura Miano (she/her) & Liam Brosnahan (he/him)
Posmo is a sex toy concept store with over 100 products consisting of toys, sex accessories, sexual health products and sex-inspired art, picked by sexologist Laura Miano.
The product selection ranges from established industry favourites to niche small-name brands, offering a suitable sex toy for each person’s financial and sexual needs.
Posmo is also an educational platform with plans to host monthly Melbourne-based workshops on pleasure, sexuality, and gender, and to offer an online resource through our Instagram and website, for people to access accurate sex information.
What inspired you to start Posmo?
To provide a safe and inclusive space for people to find their perfect sex toy. After working in fashion for some time, I found there were no sex toy companies that provided an aesthetically pleasing journey, like you usually experience when purchasing a special piece of clothing. I knew the sex toy industry needed this, as well as a fresh young take on sex. People are super eager to learn more about sex, pleasure and sexology so on top of selling sex toys, I want to use Posmo to run workshops and throw parties, where people have an opportunity to educate themselves and learn/try new things. Helping people find a more enriching sex life is our biggest inspiration!
Could you tell me how you're using Queer Theory to inform your production? And, why is this important?
Queer Theory was a huge part of my sexology studies. I found it fascinating and read a lot of academia relating to it. It underpins our philosophy at Posmo because we don't make any assumption about a person's sexual preferences based on their sexual orientation. Queer Theory argues that a person's sexuality is far more complex than what a sexual orientation might suggest. While we embrace and fully support all sexual orientations, particularly LGBTIQA+ folk, we aim to look at each person as an individual with an idiosyncratic pleasure map. This is important as we want each person to feel heard and understood by us, feeling safe to communicate what they are looking for, knowing we will understand and appreciate their unique sexual identity. We will never assume that we understand a person’s preference because everybody’s experience with sex and eroticism is so incredibly different.
While sex toys aren't the taboo they used to be, there's still lots of work to be done - especially involving non-cis male sexual pleasure (everyone else!!!). How do you aim to tackle this?
Absolutely. We will provide educational resources on our instagram and website, and run regular workshops to educate and empower people who don’t identity as a cis-male. We will also be donating to LGBTIQA+ charities and will be collaborating with artists who identify outside cis gender identities. We think it’s incredibly important that people of non-cis gender identity find a safe space in Posmo to discuss and feel connected to their gender identity.
The toys are all so beautiful and fun! How do you source them, and what's the criteria for choosing?
Thank you. I source our toys based on their quality (it’s imperative the toys are pleasurable of course!), their materials, like body safe and non-porous materials, their design, and whether they have anything characteristically interesting about the - I’ve spent hours searching through the depths of the internet, going through sex toy stores from all around the world. The more niche, the better.
Through my work as a sex therapist, I treat a lot of vulva and penis with sexual concerns like vaginismus (sexual pain), anorgasmia, premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. There are a number of sexual health products (that can double up as pleasure toys) which are very effective at helping people with these issues. This is also another big factor I consider when sourcing our sex toys.
Overall, it’s super important that our product selection is sexually inclusive - something for everyone! We also like to have a good variety between bigger brands and smaller more niche ones.
Sourcing the products is one of my favourite parts of the job! I have a lot of experience using sex toys so it’s such a great feeling to be able to help others start their journey using them too :)
Whether online or in a store, shopping for a sex toy can feel really overwhelming. We've all been there. Are you aiming to be open to have open and honest conversations about sexuality and preferences with your customers?
Most definitely, I do this 18 hours a week with my clients already! It’s very important to open up a space for people to discuss what they genuinely like. To do this, our community will be able to send through their questions and enquiries to our email or chat box. We will also be providing a lot of education on the toys so we hope people gain a lot from these resources.
Shortly after launching we are also looking into providing a booking system where people can purchase a time slot if they want to have a more indepth consultation regarding what’s best for them.
All in all, we really want our customers to feel they can reach out with any of their wildest, tamest, most abstract and most conservative sexual curiosities, and it will be met with absolute respect.
