CES parent the Consumer Technology Association created a public relations disaster in January when it unceremoniously revoked an award from sex tech startup, Lora DiCarlo and its product Osé.Vela [now Osé] does not fit into any of our existing product categories and should not have been accepted for the Innovation Awards Program,& the organization wrote at the time.
&CTA has communicated this position to Lora DiCarlo.
We have apologized to the company for our mistake.The CTA would go on to apologize and reinstate the award.
During a panel today at TechCrunch Disrupt, founder and CEO Lora Haddock told the audience, that in hindsight, &I think they actually did us a pretty big favor.Back in May, we noted that the CTA apology serendipitously coincided with a $2 million funding raise for the company advanced sex toy.
Haddock noted that, while the CTA initial move was understandably both &disheartening& and &devastating,& the startup decision to push back on historical biases, including booth babes and the underrepresentation of female speakers, ultimately became a win.We started to really look at some of their policies and recent procedures in the last few years,& Haddock said.
&A lot of booth babes products that were on the floor are geared towards male sexuality, but apparently something geared towards a female gaze was frowned upon.
So, we fought it, and eventually we ended up winning, we ended up on an international press circuit, we got a ton of ton of coverage.