YAKIMO
06-04-2007, 10:05 AM
Beat the quickness with a wrapper of thickness, says condom maker
A condom whose maker boasted it was so thick it limited sensation would normally find itself getting the sack, but one such prophylactic of profuse plastic is currently big in Japan, according to Spa! (4/10).
In a deflated condom market that has dropped from 730 million units shipped in 1980 to just 420 million units by 2004, a surprising skin is actually seeing its sales ballooning.
Okamoto Inc., Japan's biggest producer of condoms, normally boasts of having unsheathed a thinner-than-ever-before birth control device.
"Standard condoms come in a thickness of around 0.05 to 0.06 millimeters, but Skinless, our company's main product, is a sheer 0.02 millimeters -- a measurement that stands as proof of our prowess," Okamoto's Takeshi Saito tells Spa!
But now the maker of membranes has revealed that its Goku-Atsu brand is also an amazing success despite a thickness of a whopping 0.1 millimeters, which in condom terms literally makes it a Great Barrier Sheath!
"We had a product planning meeting where somebody mentioned that a thick condom would be good for premature ejaculation sufferers because it would dull the sensation felt by the penis," Saito says, noting the Goku-Atsu ranks highly on most online sales sites. "Considering the industry is built around competition to come up with the thinnest possible product, and suspecting that whoever thought of that must know what premature ejaculation is like, it must have taken a lot of guts to make a proposal like that."
Okamoto's development of the thickest possible condom was unprecedented. And producing the Goku-Atsu was a lot more difficult than simply lopping the finger off a rubber glove. In fact, it took just as much technical development to get the thick condom just right as it did to come up with a dong sarong that barely feels like it's on.
"If 0.02 millimeters is the thinnest a condom can get, then 0.1 millimeters is the thickest," Saito says. "Just as it's difficult to blow up balloons where the rubber is thickest, so we found the thicker the rubber we used, the less elasticity we got and the more likelihood it was that the condom would break. Of course, there's always the matter that there's hardly great demand for thick condoms, but another reason why no other companies produce them is that they don't have the technical capability to do so."
Okamoto has found it's not just the users of Goku-Atsu who are quick off the mark. The condom maker has found fans in areas not initially targeted, especially the gay community, where many are delighted that the thick throbber thermos is not as susceptible to breaking when large amounts of lubricant are applied, as regular rubbers are.
"Goku-Atsu is a product that meets the diversifying sex lives of today's society. But the fundamental concept behind its production was the creation of a condom that guarantees safety," Saito tells Spa! "To make sure we're doing that, we constantly monitor the market, carry out research and think of what we need to do to get people to use it. You've got to dig a little deeper to find out what the market's core needs really are."
A condom whose maker boasted it was so thick it limited sensation would normally find itself getting the sack, but one such prophylactic of profuse plastic is currently big in Japan, according to Spa! (4/10).
In a deflated condom market that has dropped from 730 million units shipped in 1980 to just 420 million units by 2004, a surprising skin is actually seeing its sales ballooning.
Okamoto Inc., Japan's biggest producer of condoms, normally boasts of having unsheathed a thinner-than-ever-before birth control device.
"Standard condoms come in a thickness of around 0.05 to 0.06 millimeters, but Skinless, our company's main product, is a sheer 0.02 millimeters -- a measurement that stands as proof of our prowess," Okamoto's Takeshi Saito tells Spa!
But now the maker of membranes has revealed that its Goku-Atsu brand is also an amazing success despite a thickness of a whopping 0.1 millimeters, which in condom terms literally makes it a Great Barrier Sheath!
"We had a product planning meeting where somebody mentioned that a thick condom would be good for premature ejaculation sufferers because it would dull the sensation felt by the penis," Saito says, noting the Goku-Atsu ranks highly on most online sales sites. "Considering the industry is built around competition to come up with the thinnest possible product, and suspecting that whoever thought of that must know what premature ejaculation is like, it must have taken a lot of guts to make a proposal like that."
Okamoto's development of the thickest possible condom was unprecedented. And producing the Goku-Atsu was a lot more difficult than simply lopping the finger off a rubber glove. In fact, it took just as much technical development to get the thick condom just right as it did to come up with a dong sarong that barely feels like it's on.
"If 0.02 millimeters is the thinnest a condom can get, then 0.1 millimeters is the thickest," Saito says. "Just as it's difficult to blow up balloons where the rubber is thickest, so we found the thicker the rubber we used, the less elasticity we got and the more likelihood it was that the condom would break. Of course, there's always the matter that there's hardly great demand for thick condoms, but another reason why no other companies produce them is that they don't have the technical capability to do so."
Okamoto has found it's not just the users of Goku-Atsu who are quick off the mark. The condom maker has found fans in areas not initially targeted, especially the gay community, where many are delighted that the thick throbber thermos is not as susceptible to breaking when large amounts of lubricant are applied, as regular rubbers are.
"Goku-Atsu is a product that meets the diversifying sex lives of today's society. But the fundamental concept behind its production was the creation of a condom that guarantees safety," Saito tells Spa! "To make sure we're doing that, we constantly monitor the market, carry out research and think of what we need to do to get people to use it. You've got to dig a little deeper to find out what the market's core needs really are."