Andrew Gurza is a podcaster and disability awareness consultant living in Toronto, Canada. He’s also one half of the brother-sister duo behind Bump’n, an inclusive sex-toy startup that, until running into trademark issues, was called Handi. Last week, on International Day of People with Disability, pre-sales of Bump’n’s first product, the Joystick, went live.
Here, Andrew talks with Hireup’s Melanie Dimmitt on the name change, the process of building Bump’n with his Sydney-based sister, Heather Morrison, and what we can expect from world’s first disability-driven sex toy.
Congrats on the new name. Bump’n sounds very fun!
Thank you. We were heartbroken to lose Handi because it was our baby, and it was an amalgamation of Heather and Andrew together. But the more and more we do stuff with Bump’n, and the more and more we craft a narrative around it, the more we love it.
It’s great how you bounced back and rebranded. I think a lot of people would be crying in a corner, you know? If it’s not Handi, it’s not happening!
We had that movement where we were like, do we just walk away? Are we done? What do we do now? But we both recognised the importance of what we’re trying to do and the name doesn't change that. We could have called ourselves Purple People Eater and it wouldn’t change what we’re doing.
Bump’n is a maker of inclusive sex toys. Why was this something you and Heather wanted to start?
This all started when Heather and I and we were on the beach in Bondi, talking about the documentary I was in where I talked about my inability to masturbate. She said, you know that part where you talked about how you can’t self-pleasure? Why don’t you just get a toy? And I said, well, none of the toys on the market work for me because of my hands. Then she said, do you think we should change that? Do you want to make one? And I was like, I don't know if I want to make a sex toy with my sister!
We put a survey out on Reddit a couple of weeks later, and we found that of the hundred people we surveyed, 92 per cent of people said they wanted an inclusive sex toy. And 63 per cent of people said they had trouble self-pleasing due to hand limitations. We very quickly realised, oh, this isn't just a quick fix to get Andrew to be able to have some pleasure. This is actually going to change the game for so many hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Once the ball started rolling and we saw there was a need, Heather's ad and marketing brain kicked in and my disability activism brain kicked in and we were like, well, let's fix the problem then.
What research and design process led you to your first product, the Bump’n Joystick?
We found Dr Judith Glover in Melbourne, who’s with RMIT university and is one of the leading sex tech designers there. We got on the phone with her and she said, this is something that I've been trying to solve for years. If you guys want to put something together, I will work with you to help get this thing off the ground.
So we scrambled to get some GoFundMe dollars to get that research done, and figure out if what we were doing actually made sense. Judith connected us with a bunch of occupational therapists (OTs) and physiotherapists (PTs) and disabled community members in Australia who could give us feedback on the toy and tell us what they wanted.
Heather was on the ground there, talking to people on Zoom and going into meetings with PTs and OTs. As for me, I was sent buckets and buckets of sex toys from the team in Australia who said, use these for us and then tell us what worked and what didn't work.
What kind of feedback did you give the team about the sex toys?
Because of my dexterity, I can’t grab certain things. So from the very beginning, I said I need a big toy, like a body pillow or a foam roller - something that doesn’t rely on fine motor skills. And then the other people that we went to would say the same thing. So it really was our conversation and a lot of back and forth about access that got us here.
It's really been a disability-driven design process. Having a disability-driven design means, from ideation all the way through creation, you have a disabled person or a bunch of disabled people in the room to guide you on how to make something accessible. And that's how we came to create the Bump’n Joystick.
The Joystick is designed to hold existing sex toys, meaning anyone can use them, hands-free. What are some of the ways that this product is, as you say, Bump’n through barriers?
You can hug it. So the top is a soft pillow piece that has a gooseneck in it that's able to move around. So if you couldn't hold a vibrator, you could hold this thing on your genitals or any part of your body where you find pleasure, and just let that do the work for you.
In Australia, the Joystick will be funded through the NDIS scheme. So if you don't have a couple of hundred dollars lying around to get a toy, you can claim it and get the money back. That makes it really accessible.
Even the packaging is accessible. Tell me about that.
It's not going to be a box because boxes are notoriously difficult. I think it'll be like a sleeve that you just pull off. The whole point of what we're doing is for the user journey to be inclusive, from the start to the finish. Not just having a wank, all the way through.
What advice do you have for people who are keen to try the Joystick?
I would say head to getbumpn.com, find out what we’re all about, and pick up our Bump’n Book of Love, Lust and Disability, which is currently discounted on our website.
You might not even be a disabled person. You could have hand pain, or you’re getting older and you're finding your dexterity shifting, because that happens as we grow older, arthritis is real. Get the toy. Yes, we’re marketing it to the disabled community, of course we are. But it’s a toy built for everybody. This is a product that we want everyone to have access to.
Head to the Bump’n website to pre-order the Bump’n Joystick, and watch this space for more updates from Andrew and Heather.
