By Peter Berton

AUSTIN, Texas – It’s difficult to imagine a man who hasn’t at least heard about the Fleshlight male masturbator, unless he’s living in a cave. The realistic vaginal, anal or oral openings — many molded from adult stars like Nina Hartley, Jesse Jane, Tera Patrick, Brent Corrigan and Austin Wilde — are cunningly hidden in what appears to be an oversized flashlight case. The products, designed and manufactured in Austin, Texas, have swept the world.

Why on Earth did a sex-toy company locate its headquarters in a state that is notorious for browbeating adult businesses? David Ashley, chief technology officer for parent company Interactive Life Forms LLC, has a funny story about that. In fact, Ashley has funny stories about a quite a few Fleshlight adventures.

YNOT.com: Give us a little history about the company.

David Ashley: Fleshlight was invented by Steve Shubin, owner and [chief executive officer] of Interactive Life Forms LLC. The long story made short is that he and his wife entered a complicated pregnancy with twins. Early on in the pregnancy, the couple was told they needed to abstain from intercourse to ensure the safety of their unborn daughters. Steve realized that other men probably had gone through similar trials, and he set out to create a product for men that promoted sexual responsibility.

What was the development process like?

Shubin’s sons helped create the realistic flesh material and molded the first interactive life forms; hence the name of the company. The early products were whole torsos and were targeted at a market that could afford expensive sex toys.

After many iterations and refinements, Steve decided that only the important part need to be produced, and discretion was a top priority. This is why the Fleshlight toys resemble a flashlight or tool of some sort.

How was the product marketed?

Initially the company was manufacturing out of Las Vegas, and Steve was doing a lot of the heavy lifting. It was a manual process like most start-ups, which had him pouring molds by day, packaging, and then driving the products to stores around California.

At first his customers were distributors, but it’s hard for a new company to support net terms when capital is needed to operate. Steve abandoned the [business-to-business model] and launched his first website in 1997 to sell directly to consumers.

At that point, sales grew from four or five a day to 20-40 a day, but the real bang happened when Steve employed the principals of affiliate marketing. Affiliates had the reach to really spread the brand, and daily orders shot up to more than 300-400 a day. We’ve experienced growth ever since.

In 2008 Steve restarted his B2B business, which for a while was by invitation only and much of it was overseas. This business grew exponentially, and we frequently have friendly internal competitions to see who can show the greater growth rate, revenue and general performance.

Fleshlight is located in Texas. Isn’t that a tough place to run a sex toy business?

Ain’t that the truth!

When I started in 2006, we couldn’t even manufacture in Texas due to some ancient laws that prevented it. We manufactured and shipped from Las Cruces, NM, until February 2008. That was when a federal appeals court overturned a Texas statute banning the sales of sex toys, deeming such a statute as violating the Constitution’s 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.

Steve immediately made moves to get his marketing and manufacturing in the same place [as the administrative offices], and before the year was up, the whole operation was in Austin, Texas.

This is an issue we still face globally, however. Various countries that are fundamentally religious ban the sale and distribution of our product. All of our Arabic-language sales are made outside of Arabic countries.

Even more progressive countries like Lebanon restrict our product. Fleshlights literally get stopped at the border — but somehow never get returned. I’d wager you could track receding stress levels in certain countries to confiscated Fleshlight shipments.

So once everything moved to one location, you started expanding the line?

We had two major line expansions before the new product releases in 2012, and those were the introduction of the Fleshlight Girls brand and Fleshjack, which is targeted at gay males. Steve hired a team to get Fleshjack going, and his wife Kathy was very instrumental in both the art and concepts surrounding the brand. We wanted to ensure that our gay male customers know we fully support their community, and we did that by creating an independent brand and supporting many Pride events every year, along with a host of other smaller events, contests and promotions.

Was it difficult to convince adult stars to mold their private parts?

I laugh a little at how small [that part of the business] was in the beginning and how no one would talk to us or return our calls. Initially, we worked strictly with solo-girls. Our most successful models were Raven Riley and Lia19.

It was hard to get in with the studios. I remember one actress was quoted angrily chastising her manager for “bringing me out here to work with some silly jack-off toy company.” One star told me “you don’t look like you work for Fleshlight” when I approached her after a feature dance at a local club. It was a cookie we couldn’t crack for the first year after launching Fleshlight Girls.

Now, if Steve has passed anything on to his sons, it’s been business prowess and resourcefulness. Two of his sons that held [chief operating officer] and [chief manufacturing officer] positions persisted with the studios, using much of their own non-[Interactive Life Forms]-related influence and resources to finally land a major star: Tera Patrick.

After that we did deals with Digital Playground and other studios to create the all-star lineup we have today — including the model that shined me on. She probably doesn’t even remember, and I won’t remind her today. We’re cool, and she’s one of our top sellers.

I think people, talent, the industry as a whole and even we ourselves didn’t realize how popular the Fleshlight was going to be. Often we review our reports and say, “Wow. I mean, I thought that would work, but not that well!”

What’s the most unexpectedly popular product Fleshlight has developed?

The Freaks. Gotta be the Freaks.

Steve, Kathy and I had a conversation one day about the popularity of World of Warcraft — this was during the whole Lich King thing — and some funny videos of guys getting caught masturbating to their character’s avatar. Steve [Shubin] Jr. [head of research and development for Interactive Life Forms] came out a few months later with more Freaks prototypes than we knew what to do with.

We had elves, cyborgs, zombies, Frankensteins, aliens and loads more, all with the unique coloring you can see in the products on the site today.

I never thought the vampire products would work just because, you know, sharp teeth and your dick don’t really mix well. But those lines of Sex in a Can products continue to be successful today.

Where did the Mr. Limpy flaccid penis product come from, and who is the market?

Ah, Mr.Limpy … or to some, Señor Flojo. Mr. Limpy is just hilarious, whether you get the tiny one or the ridiculously extra large one. Everyone jokes how that one is molded after themselves.

It’s just funny, and because it’s made from the same realistic flesh material, it feels damn real — a little too real.

First time I saw a Mr. Limpy, our marketing director walks in with the extra-large swinging outside his pants. I was like “WTF?!” Both of us burst into laughter when I realized it was a Limpy.

I will have to say not everyone finds the realism funny, and some of us have gotten in some serious trouble wielding our Limpys in public, so be careful when you want to rock out with your cock out.

Nowadays it seems every adult star has his or her own Fleshlight mold. Has that become a rite of passage? How do you decide what internal textures to give their individual toys?

We always try to find stars where the relationship will be mutually beneficial. Having a good fan base that will want your product is essential, and ladies like Lisa Ann, Stoya and Jesse Jane are internationally recognizable.

In terms of the texture, Steve Junior is a genius at coming up with new textures. Our current COO asked the question, “How many unique experiences can he make?” We discovered the answer is “a lot!” Steve Junior’s a mad scientist when it comes to that.

We try to name them to fit the girl in some way, either with alliteration, like Jenna Haze Maze, or because we like some part of the girl’s anatomy, as is the case with Riley Steele’s Nipple Alley. Who doesn’t like Riley’s nipples?

How many Fleshlights are there out in the world today? Does that ever boggle your imagination?

Funny story: Steve and Kathy are creators and builders, and they have a nightclub on their ranch. Yes, a real badass night club with VIP seating and everything!

Anyway, we were doing a shoot out there and one of production staff stated in awe, “It’s hard to believe this is all [the ranch, the nightclub, etc.] built from Fleshlight.” The model responded, “Wait — they built this building out of Fleshlights?”

It is really awe-inspiring when I look at the numbers. At this point there are more than six million Fleshlights in the world, and that doesn’t count the ones we give away at shows, send as care packages to soldiers or provide as marketing material to potential partners.

What are the company’s future plans?

Keep pushing for the next level and adopt changes that promote growth. Steve and Kathy are both highly ambitious people, and they inspire that in their staff. Steve’s a guy who wants to see things done yesterday, so we’re always pushing as hard as we can to meet that demand.

We have new product releases coming out. A new version of Flight was released in January at [the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo], and our websites continue to evolve to bring our customers the best shopping experience on all their devices.

As you know, we have a facility in Spain that’s been operating beautifully for just over two years, and Europe continues to be an exceedingly high area of sales, revenue and brand-recognition growth. We’re going to be planting the Fleshlight flag in other countries soon, bringing local currency and shipping to our customers there. I’d like to tell you where, but I don’t want to ruin any surprises.