On September 3, 2026, Kate Kozlova, US Sales Manager for teledildonics brand Kiiroo, published a candid assessment of how pleasure-product businesses should navigate the current consumer slowdown — and her central argument is that most of the industry is still measuring itself against a year that is not coming back. The piece, surfaced via Adult FYI, lands against a backdrop of consumer spending cuts, higher production costs, tariffs and supply-chain uncertainty that has squeezed manufacturers and independent retailers alike through 2026.

Why It Matters

This is the first clear articulation from inside a major connected-device brand of what the 2026 slowdown actually looks like operationally, and it corroborates a pattern Afterglow has been tracking piecemeal: Rouge opening a US warehouse to dodge import duties, Bellesa spinning up a discount outlet, Dame refunding tariff surcharges, and ANME shutting down entirely. Those are all symptoms of the same compression. The strategic read for operators is that the industry's growth story has quietly changed shape. Category expansion driven by destigmatization is still real — mainstream retail keeps adding shelf space and market forecasts keep pointing at $70B+ by 2035 — but the per-customer spending tailwind of 2021-2022 has fully reversed, and brands optimizing against those comps will keep missing. The discounting warning is the most immediately actionable point: a pleasure-products market that trains its customers to buy only on promotion has a permanent margin problem, and in a category where consumer confidence is the real conversion barrier, education is a cheaper lever than price. For investors, the flag is that revenue quality matters more than growth rate in this cycle — brands holding price with educational content are healthier than brands holding volume with markdowns.

Her framing of the benchmark problem is the sharpest part. The post-pandemic period, powered by government stimulus and record consumer spending, produced rapid growth that many companies internalized as normal. Kozlova's position is that targets built on those sales are no longer realistic, and that the arithmetic has changed underneath them: with inflation making existing customers more selective, declining revenue per existing account has to be replaced by new-customer acquisition rather than by squeezing the current base harder. Brands that maintain visibility through downturns tend to emerge stronger, she argues, but only if they adapt rather than run an outdated playbook louder.

The specific tactical advice runs against instinct. Kozlova identifies cutting marketing during a downturn as a common and costly mistake — it reduces cost in the quarter and brand visibility for years — and singles out price wars as the more damaging version of the same error. Frequent discounting may lift short-term sales but trains customers to wait for promotions, eroding both margin and brand value. Her alternative is increasing perceived value rather than cutting price: better education, product bundles, exceptional service, exclusive products or gifts with purchase. Customers remember how a brand made them feel, not which week it was cheapest.

For manufacturers specifically, she argues that trade-show attendance can no longer function as the entire B2B strategy — a pointed observation in a year when ANME ended its 30-year run and SZI Expo slipped to March 2027. The replacement is unglamorous: building relationships, educating retailers, travelling for new accounts, and generating consumer demand year-round rather than in bursts around show calendars. Relying solely on B2B partners to create demand, she notes, is insufficient; brands have to generate it directly.

Her list of high-return investments during a slowdown is worth reproducing for its specificity: staff training, retention programs, e-commerce improvements, SEO, educational content, product innovation, AI tools, and reusable photo and video assets. Education, in her framing, is the industry's single most impactful marketing channel — blogs, videos, podcasts, tutorials, workshops — because it addresses the actual purchase barrier, which is confidence rather than price. For independent retailers, she argues the defensible advantage against online is the human one: expert advice and genuine conversation cannot be shipped, and in-store events like couples nights and educational workshops convert foot traffic into relationships. Kozlova, known as InBedWithKate on YouTube, is certified by the American Board of Sexology as a public information sexologist and was named Brand Ambassador of the Year at the 2026 XBIZ Honors.

Sources

Update — 2026-09-05

{Initial entry — story first created.}