By: Dylan Sikes - AllPennyStocks.com News

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

The sexual wellness industry has been going through a steady shift from essentially being a four-letter word with products only sold secretively from behind the counter or through a limited number of specialty mail order or online companies to a much wider acceptance and sales through reputable retailers. The easing of uptight tension over sex-related products has come in many forms, including television shows like Sex In The City and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Eva Longoria opening up publicly about what they do behind their bedroom doors. Not missing a beat with the revolution, venerable firms like U.K.-based consumer health and hygiene giant Reckitt Benckiser, who generated more than US$15 billion in revenue in 2013, got in the mix by acquiring K-Y personal lubricants last year and Durex condoms in 2010. Also in 2014, NY private equity firm Brookstone Partners added to their portfolio Diamond Products LLC, the holding company that owns Pipedream Products, one of the largest designers, manufacturers and distributors of proprietary “romance products” in the United States. The once-clandestine sex toy industry (err…sexual wellness industry) is expected to remain vibrant, with some pundits predicting that it will grow from about $12 billion in 2012 to $52 billion in 2020.

Las Vegas-based Empowered Products, Inc. (OTCQB:EMPO) doesn’t plan to miss out on the growth, aiming to expand its presence in the global sexual wellness industry with the development, manufacture, and distribution of products under the award-winning PINK® and Gun Oil® brands, such as PINK Indulgence Cream and Gun Oil Stroke 29. Currently, the company's products are available at more than 24,000 retail locations in more than 30 countries spanning four continents.

The number of locations should be getting a boost here in the not-too-distant future as Empowered said on Tuesday that its PINK and Gun Oil brands of personal lubricants have received CE certification and the CE Mark as Class 1 Medical Devices. The new labels give Empowered the ability to begin expanding distribution of the products throughout retailers and wholesalers in the 27 member states of the European Union and the European Free Trade Association countries of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

"I am very proud that our PINK and Gun Oil products now bear the CE Mark. This is an important accomplishment and a critical step in our company's plan to market and sell our products worldwide," said Scott Fraser, president and CEO of Empowered Products, in a statement today. "

The company already sells products in Europe on a limited basis, with $65,365 in revenues from Europe during the third quarter of 2014, up from $44,485 in the year prior quarter. Other nominal amounts of revenue come from Asia ($29,027 in Q3) with the lion’s share of sales derived in the United States. Sales sunk in the third quarter to $981,432 from $1,464,845 in Q3 2013, but the year prior revenue was positively impacted by an initial sale into a national retail chain’s sales pipeline. Even with that in mind, sales through the first nine months of 2014 ($3.66 million) were essentially even with the same period of 2013 at $3.69 million.

Investors will be looking ahead to how 2014 ended as the company said during the fourth quarter that its PINK® Water personal lubricant made the Top-10 list for unit sales as reported by IRI Data in Chain Drug Review. Among the major lubricant producers included on this list are Trojan and KY, Reckitt Benckiser’s Durex and Trojan. As for yesterday, the markets didn’t react to the news with the always thinly-traded stock not trading a share and closing at $0.31, equating to a market capitalization of $19.46 million.

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