Silicone dolls, this seems to be an embarrassing word. Whether it is senior practitioners or silicone sex doll players, few people will discuss it publicly or share photos of dolls with friends. Behind silicone dolls, there seems to be some shameful, obscure, and unbearable needs.In China, about 100,000 real sex dolls are sold on e-commerce platforms every month, and the global sales of real dolls can reach nearly 2 million pieces per year.I used to work in a cross-border e-commerce company. Later, due to the epidemic, the company was about to fail, so I started looking for a new job, but it was not easy to find a new job. In two or three months, I submitted hundreds of resumes, but I didn’t even receive a few interview invitations.Finally, because there was no better choice, I accepted an interview invitation from an adult products company. Before the interview, the HR specifically emphasized to me that this company was engaged in adult products, and the position I was interviewing for belonged to a new project of the company, silicone teen sex dolls, and asked me if I could accept it. To be honest, there was definitely a conflict, but I was indeed in a hurry to find a job, so I had to accept the interview invitation first to see the situation.The interviewer that day was my future boss. He talked to me about their silicone doll project. Later, he personally took me to the company's studio to see the product. Although I had made some psychological preparations, I was still a little shocked when a row of life-size silicone dolls appeared neatly in front of me. But I tried to pretend to be worldly-wise and pinched the silicone doll with my boss.After joining the company, the first thing that shocked me was the price of luxury sex dolls. The cheapest on the market starts at $3,000. Because they need to be handmade, the existing factories in the industry are small-scale production, and it is difficult to reduce costs. $4,000-5,000 is the normal price.Later, our company began to develop silicone sex dolls. When I joined the company, the company already had four dolls of different heights, and the cheapest mini sex doll was only $1,500. At this price, our silicone dolls should be very popular in the market, but when we actually sold them, we found that we wanted to divide the market for more than just the price.There is also a doll made of TPE (thermoplastic rubber) on the market, which only costs about $1,000. Most of these sex dolls are petite and belong to the category of skinny sex dolls. When people search on e-commerce platforms, most people's first priority is price, and then choose a doll with the right price. The material cannot be touched or seen, and few people will notice the difference.Although TPE dolls are cheaper, they feel softer and there is still a gap in the touch of real skin, while silicone dolls feel more like real people, but many people don’t know these things.So it is not realistic to win the market immediately by relying on price advantage. We need to let consumers know the advantages of silicone sex dolls. This is also the meaning of my position, content planning.My most important job is to understand the target users. This group of people is called "doll friends" in the circle. At the beginning, my main job was to mix into the places where they gathered, such as forums and QQ groups, and observe what kind of people they are.At that time, my main research base was the Liuyun Forum, a website that has been in existence for five years and has more than 100,000 registered users.In China, there are hundreds of thousands of consumers of real dolls every year, but few people dare to share publicly in the circle of friends, but on the Liuyun Forum, they can talk unscrupulously about how to take pictures of dolls to make them look good, how to take care of and collect them, and which brand of dolls is more realistic.To understand our users, this is the closest place. If you want to get the first batch of customers, this is also the most core place. Every day when I have free time, I will lurk in the forum and watch people share their stories with dolls.From here I learned that the actual users of real dolls can cover all kinds of people in reality, including factory workers, single fathers, middle school teachers, and even female college students(Cosplay sex dolls are their favorite).The purpose of the physical dolls that everyone discusses and shares more is actually taking pictures, accompanying and role-playing. Some stories that would not be understood in reality have an outlet here.From this perspective, silicone dolls are an ordinary product, and doll players are just ordinary consumers. After understanding the target user group of silicone dolls, what I have to do is clearer, that is, to publish content related to our dolls on some platforms where target users may appear.I found some senior doll players on Bilibili and invited them to try our silicone dolls. In the process, I was surprised to find that most of these people were girls. When I reported this result to my boss, he couldn't believe it.However, later I gradually understood why women rarely think about other aspects when playing with dolls. They can dress up dolls openly, but if they are male players, they will be subjected to some strange looks when they appear on such an open platform.Throughout the process, my attitude towards silicone dolls continued to be released. At the beginning, when friends asked about my work, I was evasive and embarrassed to tell them directly. But after working for a year, I can already send pictures of our company's dolls to friends at work and discuss which one is better looking.But shame still exists widely among the public. Although domestic e-commerce platforms can sell 100,000 real dolls every month, the people who really discuss dolls as products are actually those in the forums.